We invited you to write to the man who gave you life and send it in – we were overwhelmed by your response. Here's a small selection from a vast postbag
- The Guardian,
- Article history
Commercial emotionalism we called it. From America. Not quite us. Then, latterly, I'd hand over a card which happened to have a bottle of Teacher's attached to it.
Things were OK then. But gradually you became less and less mobile, less and less content, less and less yourself.
Housebound, you forgot you couldn't walk and kept falling over. Ambulances were called day and night as we couldn't lift your dead-weight. I joked that you were testing the emergency services' response rate yet again. At least that made you smile. Then the nursing home for eight weeks.
Well aware that one's emotional antennae twitch like mad at such times I returned home late in the afternoon on the day you died in May and heard on the radio, When I Have Sung My Songs, with the two opening lines When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more – oh boy (thanks, Radio 3), the tears flowed.
As I wrote my eulogy I felt you saying, "Say it true, and make them smile."
They did. I hope you did too.
Graham Webb
Dear Aged Parent, the hangover from your epic birthday party is receding now, but the memory of your grin as you blew out the candles remains. The cake was inscribed "90? You're kidding …" and your appetite for life is undiminished, even though you can see very little and your hearing is spasmodic. The hearing aid has proved useful though – when you're bored with a conversation (usually in church) you remove it, close its box with a loud snap and take a nap.
Every morning, I glance across to your house and wait for the call. It will open with the words, "So, what's happening today, love?" and you will require a full update. I know the day will involve a hunt for either your walking stick, your door key or your telephones and there will be a passionately fought game of draughts, played by touch, with your son-in-law. Later, you'll join us for dinner – the more guests, the merrier – and finally your granddaughter will tuck you into bed. Every day is a bonus now. I love you, Dad.
Celia
Dear Father, that evening, when you didn't answer the phone, I got such a fright. I knew you'd been on a week's holiday abroad but were due back that day. I rang the hotel and was told you'd left at lunch time. Eighty-eight, you drove alone, and though you're in good health, I worried.
I rang your home. Each time the answerphone came on, I left the message for you to ring back. Time passed. Dreadful scenarios invaded my mind.
Next morning, you still didn't answer. I whispered "I love you" into the receiver – something I'd never said to you before. On impulse, I checked again with the hotel. The same response, but I insisted: Are you sure? After a long pause, the receptionist said sorry, a mistake, you were still there, but in a different room, had extended your stay as the weather was so wonderful. She put me through. You apologised, said you'd tried ringing me on your mobile, but it didn't work. Whatever happened to telepathy, you chuckled.
Father, from now on I will say I love you more often.
Anonymous
Do you remember that day when we were travelling back from school, and you suddenly said, "Polly, look … There's a tree shaped like a duck!"
I'm never sure whether I saw it or not, but every time I see it now, I remember that day. Then a few weeks ago, you discovered a tree nearby shaped as if there's a bird on top. Oh, how we laughed!
You know how they say that your parents are your toughest critics? Well, I think you are. When I showed you that maxi-dress, I could tell by the look on your face that you didn't like it. At least you keep me grounded ... Obviously, being an art teacher completely shapes your view of the world. Like maxi-dresses – not too sure about those are you, Dad?
It's funny, writing this about the almighty Papa C, as my friends call you, turns out to be quite difficult, because I'm worried I might offend you. But when you read it, you cried, so it can't have been that bad. Love you very much, Dad, thanks for everything.
Love, Polly
PS. Sorry I'm not very good at art.
Dear Pog, I am relieved I still have a Pog to wish a happy Father's Day this year, as there was a time last autumn when it looked doubtful. You had a massive cardiac arrest while you were walking the dogs. Had the ambulance not arrived so quickly you would have died on the kitchen floor, having crawled back home on your belly.
The next few months were stressful even though you survived surgery. You are macho and stubborn and insisted on re-roofing the barn, rock-climbing, clearing trees and trying to outwit the cardiograms. We understood that you would rather die on your feet than live on your knees, but it was not fun for Vivienne and I to watch you take this gamble against the doctor's advice.
We are out of the danger zone now, I hope. And I am so glad you are still around to sit for long hours in the studio while I paint your first portrait in a decade. Also that you have been here to help with all the Pog-like practicalities that buying my first flat has entailed. I would have missed you horribly.
With much love, Hero
I was 12 when you kissed me at bed-time, left the house and disappeared from my life. Four years later, I opened the door to a policeman, who revealed that you had died – alone in a boarding house.
You had soldiered in the Boer war, the first world war and the London blitz. In middle age you charmed my mother into elopement and a loving marriage. But, when I was 40, I discovered that you had also been a serial bigamist, con-man, embezzler – and a librarian in the prison where you did time just before your death.
I found, too, that my name on a school bus-pass and my resemblance to you, had led an ex-con bus driver to blackmail you, and so part you from me and my mother, to avoid scandal for our sakes.
Now I am 74, I remember you only through the good things we shared in those brief early years. My most treasured possession is a chunk of limestone studded with the fossilised remains of tiny creatures, a marvel found, with you, below a sea cliff one summer day. I hold this now in my hand to mourn all those Father's Days I never spent with you.
Anonymous
If Dad were alive today, I would hug him tight, even though he would always break away from me first. I would pour him a cold beer, then another, and keep my fingers crossed we were in for Super Daddy Darling, not Boring Nasty Bastard. I would follow football and boxing and snooker just so I could talk to him about them, and try really hard every day to show him that actually, he was a much loved man. Thanks to his upbringing I don't think he ever really believed that.
If my dad were alive today, I wouldn't tell him that I thank my lucky stars I married a man who is nothing like him. I wouldn't tell him that it's still hard work to love him – even in death – when I hear new twists on old tales; cruel, selfish family dramas in which my dad had the lead role. I probably wouldn't tell him that I consider it the ultimate selfish act to smoke like a chimney all one's life and then die of lung cancer and leave us.
If my complicated, utterly fearless, brighter-than-the-sun dad were alive today, I would hug him and never ever let him go. Perhaps this time he'd let me.
Sarah Vile
I really wish I could see you again because it's really lonely without you. I hope you're happy in KitKat Land and that you're having as much fun as you did down here. I am really sad that you left us because without you our lives aren't complete. Please could you come back down again.
Lots of love, Isaac, nine
Ps I wish that you could really get this letter, and then you could reply.
I wish you didn't die, and I miss you. But I know that you're happy in KitKat Land and that when I die I'll see you again. I know that you can see us and know how much progress I am making and how hard I am trying.
Love, Madeleine, seven
I miss you. When could you come back to me?
Love, Eden, four
Duncan – Isaac, Madeleine and Eden's dad – died 2½ years ago. We are not Christians and so when they asked where Daddy had gone we invented a place where he would have all the things he liked: KitKats, Arsenal winning all the time and the PlayStation – it's called KitKat Land. Mum
There were bailiffs on the doorstep after you left. Mum got them to leave empty-handed eventually. You left your failing business, your kids and your wife who had just discovered that she had breast cancer, to run off with your secretary. I was nine, my dad had left and I was faced with losing my mum too. She had to travel more than a 100-mile round trip every day for treatment and got the all clear eventually.
At times she had three jobs to keep paying the bills and to hold on to the house, and one of her proudest achievements was paying off the mortgage a few years ago. She was so excited about retiring, which made it all the more heartbreaking when the cancer came back and took her less than a year before her 60th birthday.
This isn't a letter about anger or hate towards you. In fact, I'm thankful that you left because the arguments and the fear left with you. It also meant I forged an even deeper bond with my mum, who I miss every day. I know she was proud of the woman I've become and was thankful to see me grow up.
This Father's Day I won't be thinking of you, I will be thinking of her.
Sarah Mansbridge
You died suddenly, aged only 58, leaving me no time to say sorry. As a teenager I found you embarrassing. You used to leave your false arm lying around and I would push it out of sight when my friends came.
And I used to hide your communist Morning Star newspaper. Girls at school were talking about "reds under the bed", meaning people like you, but I felt confused; you were just my soft, silly dad.
I was too young and self-absorbed to appreciate that actually you were a hero, a veteran of the Spanish civil war. You didn't see much action; you were caught in some crossfire early on and left wounded by the roadside for Franco's troops to find you. At the PoW camp, your wounded right arm was amputated – I hate to think in what circumstances.
You made friends with some Spanish prisoners, and I remember you enjoyed an occasional glass of wine in their memory.
You'd be pleased to know that I am now so proud that in your own small way you tried to make the world a better place. Oh, and I enjoy a glass of Spanish wine too. Cheers, Dad!
Julie Norton
You died 19 months ago and I was glad to be free of you.
When I had my own children, 20 and 16 years ago, and watched the way their wonderful father behaved with them, I mourned then for the father I had never had, which all of us deserve; someone to love them, unconditionally, not to destroy their self-esteem and make them wonder why they had been born.
Sadly, your death did not relieve me of these feelings and for this lasting legacy I will never forgive you. I know your problems were never dealt with, but if passing them on to me and my siblings was your answer, then I wonder why you ever had children at all.
I have achieved all that I have in spite of you and created my own loving, happy family without your help. I will always be sad not to have had the kind of dad I needed but I have managed without you and I am glad that you are gone.
Karen
As an arrogant teenager I did not realise what a role model you were. For you, caring for one's family was the guiding principle. When your mother was dying, you went over every morning before work to lay a fire, even though your sister was living at home. When I was a hard-up student, you would frequently appear with a box of food. My friends were envious, I was embarrassed.
A working-class electrician, you made sure that your children were well-educated. We all went to grammar school and went on to gain university degrees. You were so proud of us. I remember a family wedding when you threatened to punch someone who questioned the point of a university education. Unable to articulate your thoughts – where would you begin? – your reaction spoke volumes to me.
The day Nelson Mandela was released from prison, we were celebrating as a family my niece's birthday. You watched perplexed as we all grew excited at the pictures of Mandela. Thanks to you, we were educated beyond the confines of a narrow, prejudiced view of the world. My sorrow lies in knowing that you were not.
All my love, Jacky
It's four years since you waved me off from the driveway for the last time. Manly hug, firm handshake, me flashing the car's hazard lights as I always did: a way of waving farewell. I thought this would be "See you soon, Dad", rather than "Goodbye", but I'll never forget it.
Losing you hasn't got much easier, and it's certainly been tough on Mum, but Merily and I see her every weekend, just as you and Mum looked after me when I was in a bad way, kindness for which I am eternally grateful to you both.
When I was little, I used to draw the same rubbish pictures that kids always do: every one of them had the sun stuck in a little blue strip of sky at the top of the paper. The sun always had your face, though.
Now, back to the present, and the prospect of fatherhood is real for me. I'm delighted, yet scared I'll never fill your shoes, but this I promise you: I'll do my best. If you are where I believe you are, you'll already know this.
Right, that's enough of this. Get us a pint in, eh Dad?
Andrew Bromelow
You were definitely quirky. Maybe even a tad eccentric. It wouldn't be at all unusual to come home to a landing decorated from floor to ceiling with hand-painted vines, a wall knocked down on a whim, or a meal fashioned out of the most unlikely combinations of whatever lay in the fridge.
You had a passion for erecting shelves and an obsession with labelling every belonging with its owner's name. Even now, 12 years after your premature death, I often come across a DIY tool with MJW proudly soldered on to it. Christmases would be (and are) incomplete without your adventurous treasure hunts that would inevitably end with us searching the hedges and lampposts of neighbouring streets, in the dark. I very much regret not carrying out our threat to mastermind an equally intricate hunt for you, while we still could.
I didn't appreciate your uniqueness while you were still with us but I certainly do now that you're not. Fond, fond memories of a father who afforded us such a delicate brand of guided freedom and would have enriched the lives of his beautiful grandchildren.
Anonymous
What did I call you? I have no memory of it at all. How little I know of you. You worked down a coal mine in the Rhondda valley for a while. You were a noted cornet player. A neighbour once told me that girls queued to listen to your small band when they played at dancehalls in the 30s. I believe you also played in an unemployed miners' brass band during the time of the strikes.
It is more than 70 years since you died of tuberculosis. I was only five years old and my brother not quite three. Your death was followed, not many years afterwards, by the death of our mother, also of TB.
What a lifetime of experience you have missed – you have three grandchildren, four great-grandsons. You know nothing of my upbringing, my education, my career, my marriage or my own family.
My only true memory of you, my father, is of you lifting me to sit on a kitchen table so that I could watch you and listen while you played the cornet. Now I have two musical grandsons and when I hear their trumpet and clarinet sound, I think of you.
Dorothy Ryan
You're the best I know. I always made fun of those cups that say "Best dad in the world" because, well, they are just ridiculous. And I would hope that you already know I love you enough not to have to buy you a crappy ceramic cup to remind you every day.
I have you to thank for everything. My happiness is all down to you. I think, really, I was stupid not to have realised sooner just how great you are, and I know I take advantage of that. And now I see that I'll never be able to be like you. I can try, but I would just be wasting my time.
I know we share the same interests, and we are very much alike in so many ways. But sometimes just watching birds fly isn't enough. You want to be up in the sky as well.
That last statement was silly I know. But I couldn't think of a better way of putting it.
I don't have wings as great as yours. But I admire your feathers.
I love you, Ian.
Love Mary
I went for a swim this morning; third time this week. You'd have been pleased. As a water-polo player you were dismayed that your only child was such a namby-pamby in the water. But I did learn eventually, aged 14, thanks to your limitless patience. Your grandchildren are both excellent swimmers; you would have loved to know them. It mattered so much to you that I should enjoy swimming. When I was powering up and down the pool today, even after all these years, I still wanted to shout, "Look at me, Dad!"
It's the same when I play through jazz classics on the piano. Not having your gift for improvisation, I invariably need the "dots" in front of me, but at least it's another of your greatest pleasures shared.
You died when I was 16, just after my O-level results came out. I thought they were OK, but you couldn't disguise your disappointment. Since then I have spent the last 50 years hoping to please you and elicit a smile, a grin. Weird, I know, but if I could think where to send it, I'd put a card in the post today, saying simply, "Wish you were here."
Christopher Martyn
Dear Father, I'm not sure if I've ever told you the strongest memory I have of you and me. Believe it or not, it isn't the time you joked that I had a rather large derrière in front of half our extended family, it isn't the time you invited my boyfriend to get me pregnant and "take me off your hands" and it isn't the time you let slip to Grandad that I was definitely no longer a virgin.
Despite your love of embarrassing me, my most prominent memory is, in fact, a childhood telling-off: you the disciplinarian, me the shamed daughter. Standing in front of you, taking in my lecture, I remember nervously playing with the threads on my dress. Suddenly the yelling stopped, you pulled me close and hugged me. Apparently, it was impossible to stay mad when I was looking so cute.
You probably don't remember the exchange at all … but to me, it sums you up. Boyfriends to date have witnessed the comedian in you, friends when I was young saw their former teacher and the headmaster in you.
But since that day, I've known your weakness ... and loved that it happens to be me.
Yours sincerely, your little girl
Lizzie Lunn
In my mind's eye I see you, sitting on the ledge smiling in at me, three floors above the traffic that runs along Green Lanes, Harringay, roll-up dangling from your lip, window frame on your knees, polishing the glass with a damp shmattah, enjoying a smoke on one of those regular early 1950s days between being demobbed and dying.
"I'm all right son, I won't fall."
I found this photo ("10/9/45 – Germany – Morrie) today in your box among the medal ribbons, shaving brushes and the testimonial from the commanding officer of 860 Laundry Bath Platoon: "… in sole charge of a Bath House with a small German Staff." Why are you smiling, Dad? Because you're going home soon, back to your mum (I move the stones on her grave every year when I visit yours)? Or because you just like keeping things clean?
Give me a sign, Dad, come to me in a dream, smile at me through a window. You've been gone 53 years; time is pushing on, the water needs changing and the Staff wants to get home.
Lawrence
You are quite fun! Especially when you tell me jokes and pretend to be a horse so I can ride on you like a cowgirl.
My favourite thing is when we cook together because you are a proper chef and we make a great team in the kitchen.
Sometimes you go over the line and shout too much at me, but mostly I love you and care.
I also don't like it when you tell me that you won't buy me a toy but when I make a face like a puppy dog you buy it anyway. I like it a lot.
In the future I will stay with you as long as you like but I will be a grown girl then and I will be telling you what to do. I will be a trapeze artist working in the circus and will be taking you with me around the world on the tour. Mummy will join us too.
I love you very much and wish you all the best for Father's Day.
Your Maya
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