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My Dad Just Died

As a “writer”going through this experience, writing it down makes the most sense. 4 days in I am.

My relationship with my Dad was kind of set – he was a self-important, self-centred chap who never displayed an ounce of love.

My understanding of my Dad was continually shifting. For decades he was just a background aspect until I came across the idea that psychologists start with asking about your parents.

Dad had secrets. I reckon I’ll never know all of them. I don’t think they were dark or twisted secrets but certainly in that direction. He was so incredibly staunchly anti-religion that he must have been triggered by something.

He lied. He gave me stories that illustrated a point but clearly never actually happened. It bothers me lot because I am so similar and try not to be.

My Dad’s favourite little joke was that he was a genetic engineer. His life was devoted, quite literally, to breeding the best kiwifruit and a Melbourne Cup winner. I think his actual real-world children were the 3rd least interesting breeding experiment. Unless we became Prime Minister there would not be pride in the result.

Here’s an example. He would relate the family tree of (racehorse) Kate (and her baby Complicate) to me, the 6 generations of animal husbandry he contrived with his charts and books and flowcharts. That each was scientifically going to be the one, like a doomsday priest changing the dates.

He would go into great detail explaining the genetics of the kiwifruit he created.

He never mentioned a single grandparent – of his – to me once.

My Dad was autistic and I have inherited that from him. Learning of this in my forties was fundamental and life-changing. My Dad, most likely, my best guess, went his entire life wondering why he was odd and never knew.

That destroys me.

It bothers me that my Dad’s extraordinary health journey is anecdotes. He had his first heart attack in his early thirties. Alive purely because an off-duty nurse happened to see him keel over. The general manger of a (small) insurance company, he was building an orchard on his weekend.

Then in his early forties he had a triple heart bypass Back then we waited by the phone to hear if he lived or died. I had a Schroedingers Cat experience.

He told fantastical stories, improbable things. Forming a real world which fitted into his imagined world, was hard.

He “dated” the Myer heiress. He was “friends” with some racehorse buying sheik, perhaps the richest man in the world at that stage. An All Black coach was a friend of his, from playing days. He gave my Dad a silver fern pin that commemorated his tour of South Africa, and I still have it. Yes, lines of reality are blurred. He told me the CIA tried to recruit him. Sounds insane but he was the general manager of an insurance company.

I didn’t know he was autistic. He almost certainly was not aware. I didn’t know I was, until recently.

It is day 5 of my grief “process” and I have just awoken, I lay in bed for a while, 11am on a Sunday, and somehow managed to find a useful angle, and then I sobbed, my first proper cry since.

I asked myself what my relationship with Dad would be like if he was my uncle or grandparent. And suddenly, removed from the aspects of parent/child that psychologists base a career on, I saw him as a person, someone I wanted to like. And he became my favourite grandparent and my fun uncle. I had nothing but pure love for him.

Last year I had a special experience which I am now very grateful for, massively. I lived with my parents for 2 weeks. It wasn’t a fleeting visit like the last 20 times when I knew Dad and I would have a heated argument on day 3 and I would regret visiting. (My Mum is in all of this, I’m not mentioning her because she is an angel and I also seriously doubt that Dad recognised the enormity of her love and contribution to his life. I think he saw Mum as the friendly person who cooked dinner. Fundamentally, not really.)

The fight and anger and self-importance and the need to always be right/correct had left my Dad. And for the first time ever, I wasn’t popping in for a polite catchup, and I wasn’t staying there because I was destitute or damaged. I was there from choice and care and love. And I found a Dad I could love and saw the man that my Mum loved (despite it all).

I think every woman can add (despite it all) to a relationship.

I was there to ostensibly “look after” my parents while my sister and her Craig when on a cruise. Mum doesn’t need looking after, aside from pointing out that she shouldn’t be lifting 20 kilo bags of pet food at 88. She drives better than me, although a touch spicy.

Dad was deteriorating, slowing down. Brain still worked 100% but had less to do. His body had had enough. That he was still alive was extraordinary regardless of who is telling the story.

He would stop halfway across the living room, like a hybrid car at the traffic lights.

I might have the numbers a bit wrong but here goes. He had his first heart attack insanely young, at 34. I was sought out in school and told. He was in his early forties when he had a triple bypass. In later years he got kicked in the chest by a horse, knocking him out cold. He had a heart “moment” and crashed into a tree, driving. He had a few strokes. He had diabetes (the injecting yourself kind). He had an aneurysm. He had cancer (more than once?) that was fixed by removal? I figure he had a colostomy bag but never asked. Skin cancer… a chunk of his nose tip and half his ear were removed. But with his heart, allegedly, important doctors scratched their collective heads in amazement that Dad continued to live and breathe, given his heart functionality. I think (saddens me that I don’t know this authoritatively) that he had one artery in and one out, instead of two, his bypass parts had turned to dust.

He is/was perhaps like the knight in the Monty Python movie, armless and legless, imploring his combatant tot keep trying. That (autistic determination) I see in all my kids. I love it. They take action.

If he got hit by lightning I’d expect him to shake it off as nothing. He was an ox of a man, determined and sticking around. He stuck around, without ever declaring such an intention.

I am that too, that is a welcomed genetic aspect. I’m sticking around, enthused by the potential of the future.

He is me and I am him. Maybe, possibly, religion is a cop out way of dealing with how you feel about a parent.

I’m allowed to have a parting thought in this scenario. Just popped into my head… My Dad had the potential to be a William Burroughs type. One photo of his very early adult years suggested that he could rock a suit and be drug/alcohol fucked at the same time. He was James Dean cool.

I’m not going to think about who/what my Dad could have been. Or how his “ways” affected my outcome. I’m going to picture the kind-hearted elderly gent with a falling-apart cardigan and a determination to smoke cigarettes in the Sun. Who spoke of his kiwifruit, horses and great-grand-children equally. Who secretly loved his grand-daughter trying to steal his cigarettes from that shirt pocket that is strangely cigarette packet sized. But was distant.

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