My dad was a great storyteller. He loved to talk, and he also loved to listen. As a child I remember how he’d respond to a question about history, physics or classical music by pausing, raising a finger on his left hand and saying “now that’s very interesting darling. Because, you see …” and he’d be off. As I got older the conversations often involved a bottle of wine, and mum would disappear up to read in bed and leave us talking till the wee small hours. When I moved too far away to come home at weekends I’d ring him at 10pm every Sunday and we’d talk for an hour, ring off for a comfort break and then he’d call me back for another hour. One thing that really hurt was when he couldn’t speak on the phone to me like that any more. He’d say hello, be thrilled to hear my voice, then go silent and pass the phone over to mum. That’s what I hated most about vascular dementia – it stole my father away from me bit by bit – he ‘softly and silently vanished away’ (dad would have appreciated that reference – he could quote most of Lewis Carroll’s poems from memory).
He also loved to sing – when we moved to the Isle of Wight he joined a local men’s choir and took singing lessons from a retired Covent Garden singer – and was delighted to find he was a tenor, and not a baritone as he’d thought. When we had the shop he was often heard bursting into song – the locals fondly referred to him as the Singing Grocer. I was old enough to find it funny, my baby sister used to cringe and pull a face – which made dad sing louder and longer, of course.
When dad retired from industry he trained as a CofE reader (a type of lay minister). Mum was (secretly) worried that he was going to get ordained and make her a vicar’s wife, so this compromise was a relief for her. He would preach in one of the local churches on a Sunday, and conduct memorial services at the Crem during the week. Because we’d had the village shop for so many years, and dad was also a parish councillor, he knew everybody and everybody knew him – so he got many requests from families to conduct funeral services – and he was very good at it. He’d take time to meet the family and listen to their memories, then craft them into a story to tell at the service. Families would tell us how much this had meant to them. This was more than a job to him – he loved people. He was also offered a job as a prison chaplain, and could not believe that he was getting paid to do something he loved so much that he would have done it for free. On Saturday evenings, when he got home from prison and had his tea, he’d retire to his study to write his sermon – tapping firmly on his keyboard with two fingers. Very often when we spoke on Sunday he’d run through his sermon again for me. When he wasn’t able to preach any more, and we were tidying his study, mum and I found a small pile of his talks and I published them, with his permission, on a blog I set up for him. I also had some business cards printed for him with the url so he could hand them out to anyone who he spoke to.
He was so proud when I went to university as a mature student – he discovered that he loved philosophy as much as I did, and he often bought himself a copy of any book I mentioned. When he told me that he admired me for choosing to walk away from my career and study, I told him that if I could do it, anyone could. When mum and I realised that he was itching to return to university himself, we sent off for some prospectuses and he duly enrolled for a master’s at Portsmouth University. We were all very proud when he graduated (he had started a PhD in Physics straight after his original degree, but gave it up because he didn’t think it was right that mum was out at work supporting him). I was very sad that I finished my PhD too late for him to really know that I’d completed it – once he’d have been bursting with pride at that.
I couldn’t write much about him just after he died – the words just wouldn’t flow. But now, with mum gone as well, and as we think about scattering their ashes together over his beloved Carn Brea, it feels natural to tell a little of his story. And when Jim shared his eulogy to his father, it got me reminiscing about mine.
