38) My Dad

In September 1973 my father died. It was very sudden and a shock to us all. He had been away to Lourdes with a group from the Blind Society, and seemed well. In the night he was restless in his sleep and it disturbed my Mom, she asked him if he was all right and he said he was fine, but he was having a heart attack and he died. He was only 59 but he did have a history of heart attacks, he was a diabetic and he had lost his sight ten years before.

I just can’t imagine how Mom must have felt. It must be very hard to lose someone you have been married to for almost 40 years so suddenly. The only consolation is that he did not suffer a long and painful illness. I remember a friend, Lorraine was visiting the morning I got a call from Adele to tell me the sad news. I could not believe it. Lorraine called Jonny at work and he came home. Jonathan and Dominic were very upset and cried, even though they had not known him. I just felt helpless; there was nothing I could do to help anyone. Jonny suggested that I go to town and organise a wreath so I decided to do that. I went into a florist and was told that because of the sanctions on Rhodesia I could not send out enough money to pay for a wreath that really made me feel very far away, I could not even send a wreath. I cried then. The girl in the florist explained that if I wanted to send two lots of flowers, one in my name and one in my husband’s name that would be enough to pay for a wreath. So that’s what I did. The flowers were sent through Interflora and the order went through the father of one of my best friends at school and he saw they were from me and got them delivered very quickly.

For a long time after Dad’s death I dreamt about him. We would just be working together, going out somewhere together or just sitting talking. It was sad to think that he would never come to visit me in Rhodesia, see my home and met and get to know his grand children. Every time I had spoken to him on the phone I had asked him when he was going to come and visit. He said he would love to come but the problem was that my grand father, who would have been well into his eighties by then, was becoming increasingly difficult. He had never been an easy man to get on with and old age was accentuating all of his less favourable characteristics. He was unwilling to let anyone but my mother take care of him; he would not go for a short stay in a nursing home and insisted that he was quite capable of looking after himself. Of course he could not be left alone for any length of time as he was prone to light cigarettes, forget about them and set things alight. When Mom and Dad took a few days to go and see Dulcie and her family in Cheddar they would organise for someone to pop in and keep an eye on him but when they had been away a few days he would get lonely I suppose and ring them up and say that he thought he was dying and he just wanted to say goodbye. What else could Mom and Dad do except go home and make sure that he was all right. Dad did not want to come without Mom but was looking forward to the time when they would be free to come and spend time with us.

As I have said before he was diabetic and that this had caused him to loose his sight. It took him a while to adjust to that but he did eventually. He was sent for training in Braille and basket making. When he had finished the course he got a job. It was in a factory quite a long way from our house and he had to take two buses and the travelling was just too much for him. He had a heart attack and was hospitalised for about three weeks. After that his doctor said that he did not think that he should work if he had to travel so far. He joined the Blind Society and got involved with them. He often went on trips with them and I know he went to Lourdes with them a couple of times. He told me that even though there had been no miracle cure for him it had done him a great deal of good as it had made him realise just how blessed he was. He knew that there were so many people that were worse off than he was. I remember that he told me that the people he felt most sorry for were those who were deaf. He felt that they were so cut off from contact with the outside world. He could still talk to his family and friends, he could listen to the radio, listen to music, use the telephone all things that were impossible for the deaf and he was really sorry for them. So although he never got a physical healing he certainly got a spiritual one. On his last trip to Lourdes he sent me a post card as he always did when he went away. For some reason it was a long time in arriving so I only received it about 10 days after his death. It was a bit like getting a message from heaven and it was nice to think that he had sent me a postcard from there.

Dad always had a joke and teased us all the time. I remember sometimes people would come into the shop and ask directions to somewhere and he would very seriously tell them “I wouldn’t start from here if I were you, I would go out side and turn right and then at the first road turn right, then first right again, then the next turning on the right and finally the first turn to the right. When you get there ask someone the way I am sure they would be able to explain it better than I can.” Sometimes they would fall for it but when they realised they had been had, they would come back in and have a laugh with him about it. When it was very cold he used to say “Its cold enough for a walking stick” and we always wanted to know why a walking stick. He of course could not explain, it was just his nonsense but whenever it was cold I would tell Jonathan and Dominic that it was “cold enough for a walking stick” and they too wanted to know what I meant by that. I hope that they will carry on the tradition and tell their kids that “It is cold enough for a walking stick” but maybe it doesn’t get that cold in Australia.

His favourite jokes were the silly nonsense kind. I remember he used to tell one about Paddy and Taffy, two inmates in the lunatic asylum. They were each given a pony as a gift. They did not know how they would be able to identify which pony was which. So Paddy said, “I know what, I will cut the tail off my pony and we will know that yours is the one with the tail” “Good idea” said Taffy. But when they woke in the morning they found that someone had come in the night and cut the tail off the other pony. “Now what are we going to do” said Taffy. Paddy thought for a little while and said “I know what Taff, we can cut the mane off my pony and we will know that yours is the one with the mane” Taffy was very impressed “That’s a brilliant idea Paddy, I really don’t know what you are doing in this place” When they got up the next morning they found that someone had cut the main off Taffy’s pony. The two of them were very puzzled and could not think what to do. Eventually Paddy said, “I just don’t know what to do Taffy, maybe you should just take the black one and I will have the white one”

My dad had a friend called Alfie Jones. They were both members of the Magic Circle. He had a little white fluffy dog, a Maltese poodle I think. It looked a bit like a lavatory brush, so was called LB. I remember his mother came to have afternoon tea with us once when I was pretty young. There were lots of lovely things to eat on the table; one was a plate of slices lovely well-baked bread that had big air holes. When there was only one slice left on the plate Mrs Jones started on her left side asking everyone if they wanted that last slice of bread. She asked my mother, my grandmother, my sisters, my aunt and everyone politely said “no thank you”. She was so intent on asking each person she did not notice that I had put out my hand stuck my finger into a hole in the slice of bread and pulled it towards me. It fitted nicely on my finger and so I just held it up to my mouth and ate it like that. The old lady was amazed when she came to me and was about to ask me if I wanted that last slice to see that I had already chomped my way half way through it. Afterwards my Mom tried to explain to me why it was a wrong thing to do but I couldn’t understand the logic of it, after all Mrs Jones obviously didn’t want it or she would not have been offering it to everyone else.

But back to my Dad, One day a customer came in to the shop to return something that she felt was substandard. My Mom was just checking that she had bought it from us so she asked her “Who served you?” The customer did not know our names so she said it was an “elderly gentleman”. As Dad had been the only gentleman on duty that day we knew she had to mean him but she must have been even older than him. Anyway Dad became ‘the elderly gentleman’ to just about everyone after than.

When Dad was trying to teach me to drive he told me how he had learnt to drive. In those days there were no driving licences and one did not have to sit a test, you just asked someone to show you what all the buttons and levers and things were for and you just went. A friend agreed to give him some lessons and they had gone out onto the main road between Swansea and Cardiff. Dad thought he was doing quite well until he turned the car over on its side. The friend thought it was a very unfriendly thing to do so he just got out and pushed off home, leaving Dad to sort out the problem. Fortunately a bus load of big welsh rugby players passed by and took pity on him, they got out and together they put the car back on its wheels and he drove on and never asked anyone else for a lesson again. I think he was a good driver; he worked as a driver for a short time delivering new cars from the factory to the dealers. I often wonder about the car though, who did it belong to, how badly damaged was it by being turned on its side and what did the owner say when Dad returned it. Dad tried to teach Mom to drive but she really wasn’t interested, she much preferred to sit in the passenger seat and watch the scenery.

When Dad lost his sight there was talk of giving him a guide dog but it was decided that it would not have been suitable for him so he was given a white stick instead. As his stick was a substitute for a guide dog he called it Rover.

Being the oldest son his mother relied on him more than any of the other boys. She remarried in later life to a man we all called Pops, I suppose he had another name but I don’t recall it. In the late 1950’s she and Pops went on holiday to Italy. While they were away Pops died and Mam, my grandmother did what she always did in a crisis, she called my Dad. She wanted him to come and attend the funeral. Dad had never flown before, in fact he was very nervous about it. He used to say that he did not mind how high he went into the air as long as he could keep one foot on the ground. There was no way that he could have got to Italy to attend the funeral except by air so as it was an emergency he plucked up all his courage and got a flight. When they were due to land in Rome the Pilot announced that due to the bad weather in Rome they could not land as so the plane would be going on to Cyprus and unloading the passengers that were due to get off there and if things improved in Rome they would they would return there later or else the Rome passengers would be set down at the nearest available airport. Dad asked the airhostess what was the earliest time they could expect to be in Rome and she told him and there was no way he would be able to attend the funeral. So he just relaxed and enjoyed the rest of the flight. He was never scared of flying again.

I suppose the fact that I had left home over nine years before did help to deal with his death, but I did miss him and I still do sometimes. Usually when I hear music that he would have liked on the radio. Al Johnson, Frank Sinatra, Glen Millar, Nat King Cole, Harry Secombe or just about anyone of that era. He was my Dad and I loved him.