I lost my Dad 18 months ago. The pain has eased and although I think about him most days it is usually with a smile at remembering something he said or did. When we had his wake I singled out two songs I remember he loved and sang to us when I was a kid. One of them was King of the Road and the other one was Three wheels on my Wagon.
This week I remembered this one from the recesses of my mind. Love you Dad, have fun with this one at your gig in the sky:
https://youtu.be/e3_xiUYMnXA
I envy you Steve. I never really knew my father, my mother left him when I was four. I last saw him in 1956 when he came up to the NW and, well these days it would be called abduction, he took me to the St. Helens where he bought me clothes, toys and more than likely took me to the local Wimpy Cafe. When he returned me home he was threatened by my step-father and told never to come see me again. He never did.
Anyhow I digress, you have told me about your dad in the past, so I know he was a great dad to you. You honour his memory with love and pride.
Close relationships with parents, often deceased, seems to be a common theme around here, and those posts always make moving reading whether or not that is an experience which we share.
There was a time, probably from the early sixties onwards for at least five years, when this record could be reliably expected to get a spin every weekend on Two Way Family Favourites on the Light Programme. And for that reason, it’s a talismanic song for many here, recalling Sundays that stretched out, quietly barren of external excitement, for hours ahead, listlessly dozing before Monday reared its head once more. And now, with Sunday no more than a bland work-free shopping opportunity, we long for the family time we had back then, and remember these things with affection.
I can still visualise the golden metal speaker grill of my mum & dad’s Philips radio, warmly producing those wry lyrics, having been introduced for the ninety-sixth time by the mellifluous tones of Cliff Michelmore.
Spot on Vulpes – it is the nostalgia for those Sundays that is strong in my memory. Sunday night was bath night preceded by toast and dripping with the toast browned on the electric fire.. Carbolic soap, cold lino and a bed warming pan which predated electric blankets. Topped off with Ovaltine.
Sundays in our household were the most fun because it was the only day the old man didn’t work. It was then that he came out with his accompaniment to the songs of the day – this being one of them.
I just had the first anniversary of my Mum’s passing – it came up so quickly, and was overshadowed by the wonderful news that we’ll be first time grandparents early next year.
Congratulations, Mousey! Grandchildren are all the fun with barely any of the responsibility. Enjoy.
As one life ends, another begins…
Fifty weeks ago, in a golden summer dawn, my dad slipped and fell into the River Rother, which is where they found hm, three days later. My brother and I had searched every inch. At the end, they wouldn’t let us go down the towpath.
It was a week after his 80th birthday. I found I very quickly compartmentalised the 50-odd years I had with him from the five or six that were taken away – the diminishing years, the ones where he would fade from view. The ones he would have feared and hated. Maybe that’s a coping construct; anyway, it worked.
Last weekend I found myself on another riverbank at dawn. It wasn’t some unconscious need that led me there, but an insistent biological one; I was sleeping on a narrowboat, and I needed a wee. The day was already warm, the birds were exultant and the water was dead still and rose-pink. For a second I let the thought envelop me – the one I’ve kept running from, the one of him in the reeds, alone. And then I buried him again, and went back to bed. Without waking, my wife rolled over and put her arms around me.
Top post. Warm and wonderful, knowing yet questioning, and wisely spoken.
Genuinely moving @chiz.
Thankfully the diminishing years were mercifully swift in my Dad’s case. Probably only 1 year and even then he was mentally sharp but physically fucked. Which I guess is better than the other way round.
Lovely story Chic.
Beautifully put, chiz.
My father smoked rollups all his life and they, of course had him away.
Old Holboune for the most part but the last few years he puffed an evil mix he called Black Shag.
He was taken very quickly…..a trip to the doctors with bad stomach pains, a couple of weeks where all he could digest was baby food and then hospital.
The surgeon opened him up, took a quick looksee then stapled him back together…..”riddled…nothing we can do…..sorry”.
I stopped smoking almost overnight….a few times.
The really stupid thing was the last job he did at my house….painting my daughter’s bedroom door.
He was no Turner and the door looked terrible, but when we moved house a couple of years later….I took it with me….it’s part of the bench in my garage.
Not too many people smoke Old Holbourne these days, just last year I caught a whiff of its district smell in a pub beer garden.
I turned to face the smoker…instantly a 9 year old, expecting to see my Dad.
My Dad died 20 years ago in July after fighting cancer for 3 years. It was mercifully quick once it really kicked in, and I made it for his last day though he wasn’t really there – I like to think he knew I was there though. I still think of him regularly, especially when I want a bit of advice or some badly needed common sense. Once he’d gone I realised I finally had to grow up and get on with it myself as the big rock underpinning my world had gone, this shock made greater but the fact that I hadn’t really realised it was there.
We decided not to mark the day he died but rather his birthday which was a few weeks before, so on 16th June I will pour a large one and have a bit of a moment.
Dusty here, today.
Lost my old man over 10 years ago in pretty awful circumstances I don’t want to share here.
I’m not one for Enormo-gigs but I’m Going to see the Rolling Stones next week and I’ll be very much thinking of him – if he was alive we’d have gone together.
He used to sing silly songs and chants when I was little to make me laugh – I later realised they were Goons, Python or Morecambe and Wise things – so this sorta thing reminds me of the old boy