Dear Dadda,
I miss you. I’ve been missing you a long time – 17,012 days to be precise and yes, I have included extra days for Leap Years. It doesn’t get any easier. Or maybe it does. But it doesn’t seem to hurt any less.
For every thing I remember about you, there are a thousand more I’ve forgotten. I remember your face, for example, but not your voice. Your smile, but not your laugh. I remember the Saturday afternoon you wanted to read your paper, and I was pestering you. “Sit under the table”, you said, “until I count to three”. One. Two. I was still sitting there – hours? minutes? later – when my mother came home from shopping. By the way, I tried the same trick on your granddaughter when she was a toddler. She immediately said “Three!” and released herself.
I remember running with you through a field of Shasta daisies towards a train on a track far below. I remember sitting on your knee listening to our huge radio when they announced that Churchill had died. I remember your dark red leather slippers. The Camel packet you always kept in your shirt pocket in summer. The way you held a cigarette. The fact that you wouldn’t eat fish.
I was so proud to be your daughter. Because you spoke four languages – I’m conveniently ignoring the fact here that your Irish mother-in-law never understood aword you said, because of your Luxemburgish accent. I was proud because any time we were out together in our local town, everyone knew you and said hello to us. Because there was no problem you couldn’t solve. Nothing you couldn’t do. Nowhere you wouldn’t take me, except up Nelson’s Pillar the last summer before it was blown up, and that was only because my mother refused to let me go up with you.
I still have Nunus, the rubbery Yogi Bear you gave me when I was three. I have your pens and your missal. Reports from your primary school back in the 1930s – I still don’t know how they survived. I have photographs of you, and photographs taken by you, the latter always small, with white serrated edges. Recently I found an unposted postcard on which you’d written: ‘To Marie, With love from her Dadda.” Your handwriting. That flourish. So precious.
But there are also all the things that never happened. You didn’t see me in my cap and gown, and you didn’t walk me up the aisle. You’ve never met my husband or our daughter. You haven’t played with our dogs, or watched the birds feeding in our garden. You’ve never read any of my poems. Never seen anything I’ve painted. Nor any of my photographs, which were inspired by you and your Brownie, all those years ago.
I’ve never introduced you to my favourite places. We’ve never walked along a beach together, climbed a mountain (ok, a hill), or watched the sun setting. I don’t know how you would think politically. Would you approve of my leftwing views, or would we argue all the time? I don’t know if you’d like my vegetarian cooking (such as it is) and whether you would love ring doughnuts with coffee and peanut M&Ms as much as I do.
Before our daughter was born, I told my husband there was no relationship to beat father/daughter. Seeing them together 14 years later, I still hold that view. And I think of you. Sometimes I imagine hugging you, but there’s a problem. Do I hug you as a six-year-old and leap into your arms? Or as an adult, on the level, cheek to cheek?
It happened so quickly. I woke to the sound of my mother talking anxiously to a strange man. Then suddenly there were people everywhere. In our flat. On the stairs. Most of them strangers. I’m sure it would have helped if I could have talked to someone. About that night. That horrible, horrible night. But no-one talked to children back then about the things that mattered. We were supposed to act grown up and “get over it”. The concept of counselling was still light years away. Even yet, I hate flashing ambulance lights, especially stopped outside a house at night.
I miss you. I’ve been missing you a long time. Most of my life, in fact. Perhaps it does get easier, though I’m not sure it does. What I do know is that it never hurts any less.
With all love, always
Marie xx