Twenty

19th June 1999 – 19th June 2019

No. Time did NOT fly. It limped and tottered, often careened, and sometimes hit rock bottom. Often it kept its head barely above water. My face transformed, my life it shrivels.

I remember clearly the morning. Early dawn. The realisation that Papa’s life was slipping away and the awkward otherworldly don’t be afraid.

It could be yesterday. Those moments are still so fresh. Undisturbed by the dust of two decades flipping past me. At the time my one resolution was to run away. Run away, not care, live hard, die quickly. I had no intention of making it to 2000 let alone 2019.

We make these grand self destructive plans, and someone above quietly unravels. Like a skilled engineer pushing one small lever to release a single weight that tips the scale. You then have chaos. The revolver you buy on the sly turns out faulty (bullets real). You are saved by an angry policeman who yanks you out of the river and frogmarches your drenched carcass to safety. Your intended wild night of dangerous abandon sees you walk into an empty church rather than the seedy bar you had intended. The lone light in the top stained glass window merits your curiosity, and you walk in. You seem transfixed and you find yourself not praying. Adamant you are not praying, just recounting the Lord’s Prayer because. Because because.

I think it wise sometimes to try few distractions with death before I settled into the long drawn suicide. A union that emptied both and nourished none, that was to be my chosen way out. Stop every avenue for joy. Live as if life was a distant dream. Smile vacant, live empty.

So much and so little took place. I got married. Unions did not unite us. Like railtracks we parted never to meet. We parted before we began. Some of the track rerouted after straying. Divorced. Met someone, and am still unsure if a union will ever bind us. I like to think of it as the ongoing experiment with transience. I am never to be accepted by the womenfolk of any family. Never. I then move away from thoughts of together forever. Fuck that shit. We are apex predators and hunter gatherers. It is in our nature to seek. It is not natural to be domesticated. No not for me. I still wander albeit in my mind. I still seek my Keats! Poor man!

I build however my Papa’s rose garden. Each year on the 19th June planted, year on year. I am tied to this plot. I must tend to it to the last of my days. Look after his roses. He visits still. He loves HIS garden. Idiot.

(My father’s roses in full bloom, 2019)

Last I saw him a few weeks ago. I sat on the swing crying for a friend untimely lost. He comes dancing among my freshly planted pansies, trying to be the Sugarplum fairy wearing a green shirt and khaki shorts. Nearly tripped on the unspooled garden hose. Idiot. “Papa you will fall and crack your head open, you stupid great big sliding slug!”

(Pansies 2019, and my father sat on the swing with me)

Ah but I cannot die again, can I? Watch!

He falls and there is no sound, no blood, no pain. He simply dusts himself up and beams. I can see the missing gap where my brother’s spin bowling knocked his tooth off. A very proud day for my brother wasn’t very good with spin bowling until that day. I wonder often if the impact of that worn out red cricket ball caused some damage other than the tooth. Did it set him upon the fateful journey, ending his other life. He now lives, but only with me.

Buri can we go over the menu now?

The old coot daily irritates me. It is not a party. I want a small memorial where we plant something, say some prayers, share a meal maybe. Buri. The old hag. His pet name for his Empress. I tell him its not a party and he isn’t invited. He needs to rest.

(This was a small feast cooked by me and I was lucky to have loving souls by my side to share it with. Cooking was a distraction, the entire day was memorable for different reasons, I was detetmined NOT to howl, I managed somehow, bit like life itself)

Yes yes but its for ME! My special day. I get a tree!

I realise I grow older, bitter, less fun. My erstwhile father discovers the great joyousness in living, after his demise. While he lived he wore melancholia like a fragrance. Now he is free of such burdensome perfume. He only sees joy. Like a wayward toddler. Kicking stones, upturning flowerpots, shadow dancing with parasols. Sometimes hanging upside down from the church beams (because he can). I try not to notice him. He takes it as a challenge. Some days he saves me in dramatic manner.

Last week I drove home in heavy rainfall. Misjudged my placing at a roundabout and very nearly got hit by a big van. Papa swerved the car and stopped it. I stopped at an angle in the middle of the roundabout too terrified. He put my hazard lights on, held my hand, joined me as I prayed. All the while an ABBAesque Christ figure stood in the centre of the road. In white. Long hair. Blue eyes. Not a single drop of rain touching him. For fuck’s sake! I walk two inches and am soaking wet, here comes Mr Messiah spotless. I deeply envy the ability to stay dry. Dry eyed people are like Gods. My mother never sheds tears. Beneath her magnificence. I get so angry thinkinh I still want to reach my mother’s cruel perfections. Like a stain, my mother does not leave. My father daily visits, infuriating me.

I am irritated by these many alarming sightings. I switch the engine on, music on full blast and speed away. Everything melts. Christ, my father, the road. I drive blinded by tears but I survive. What keeps me from falling into the abyss? Maybe I am become the abyss. Functional darkness.

Faith is a working hypothesis. No. ‘God is a working hypothesis’ said a wise friend recently. I can live with that. My life a great experiment into so many evils, I can also experiment with this. Unwet cloak of radiant light on a day of deluge, and the spirit of Nikki Lauda steering my Lucifer, while I think to myself, why do people take hallucinogens? I can see the phantasm, and the man of sorrows. I still refuse to believe the good in either. That is one step too far. I am not giving in. Unbelief, my one piece of kit, am not giving it, though daily this pesky faith wrestles. Unbelief is a sore loser. Faith quietly creeps in.

Like the quiet whisper on the first day of this fateful year as I drank in the sight of the sea. It took my breath away, that which came to me.

(Two trees and a rose planted for Papa in 2019)

(and another rose planted for Papa, a gift from a loving friend)

(Some more plants potted on the anniversary, gifts from loving friends)

This year you are to be confirmed, and give yourself, your whole self to me.

I reply – My Lord, My God

Then I catch myself. I cannot believe. No I cannot believe either in faith or that which I uttered. Huh! Must be the pina coladas from the night before eh? Yep yep. I traipse along and flirt with the Captain of the good ship Brittania before breakfast. One rule – flirt outrageously when entirely secure it is not to be reciprocated. The Captain (and his husband to be), and the gay pianist – my only objects of desire. No. I do like them. It isn’t flirtation, just emptiness again. Something quickly whisked up to mask my horror at what my lips uttered. Oh a very happy happy new year to you two. Confirmation? Am so fucked!

My Lord, My God.

This echoes. Like a terrible earworm. Burrowing. For fuck’s sake. Then I hear it in a sermon.

Later many months later, I hear of Doubting Thomas and his utterance. I wonder if I should change my name by deedpoll to Thomasina. It is an option. Fuck!

A dear friend dies. Unbelief dies. Faith grows, uprooting the two decades of hateful wrath. I am coming undone. This terrifies me. Without my cloak of wrath and unbelief, am I even a wretch to be reckoned with?

On the day of your confirmation, you will wear green. I shall be there, and there will be a few of us there. You will drop your Bible. You will be embarressed, but nobody will mind in the slightest. Christ will never leave you, not for a second. Even when you drop your Bible he will hold your hand. As you burnt your first Bible, he held your hair so you didn’t burn your face. He was there then, he is here now, he shall be with you on the day and every day. He is your Christ, and he has never left. Look up and he is in the sky. Look below he is the ground you stand on. Stretch your arms, as in the poem of Donne you so loved, you are yourself a living cross. In the mast of ships and telephone wires, and in every bone joint and surface modelling leaf vein, he lives. He lives in you as you live in him.

“Oh do shut up Papa!”

I cut him short. Stomp off. Slam the garden door for added effect. I am failing so badly at all of it. I am angry, unforgiving conflicted, confused. How am I ever going to make it to confirmation?! This his fantasy prediction. This he daily now recites. I tell myself I do not hear or see or smell or feel him near me. I tell myself about cold fusion and the moons of Jupiter. I try and trace perfect triangles to focus my mind. I learn Klingon. I read my Machiavelli. I cannot even bear to finger my volume of Keats. Everything I have ever known and doubted is being taken away. I am terrified.

I did tell you about the EU election and I was right wasn’t I?

“You got the margins way way wrong, it was 32% not 42% that is hardly right Papa!”

He bounces off pretending not to hear. So here we are then. Twenty years later. Not one single thing has changed. My dead father still incorrect in all his election predictions. Way off the mark.

Still enamoured of classical music fancies himself a prima ballerina. Still dictates my menu and taste tests my cooking. Still worries my pets and daily strokes and talks to my plants. Often comes to church. Often drags me to church when I am unwilling. Still brings me glasses of water and tells me I do not drink enough. Lectures me on my blood being too thick, me turning into a camel, and my brain not getting any water, hence shrinking. Calls me walnut brain. Gets wildly excited if we find a horror film we can watch together. Still by my side. Now just adamant I follow in his faith. I still resist (foolishly). I never give in. I will always try and be contrary. To give in and love Papa, would be to love my own self.

And another twenty odd years will pass us by. This cycle of dying and undying shall be the only constant in my life, along with the wetless Christ. Or his cross. Irritatingly appears when I least expect it to. Everywhere. An eye that seeks and understands patterns, sees a cross everywhere. Damn!

No I do NOT love you Papa, not one bit

But you do, and you always will. Do not ever stop loving little Tigerkitten, love ferociously, so will I.

Idiot. I hate this. This this not knowing, this fear of the knowing. I am tired of living without you. Life scares me.

Don’t be scared…