There is also a Camden New Jersey. It is a gateway to another world for my family. My father was born and raised there. My sister died there.
Dad stood up in that pub nearly 14 years ago as we were celebrating the christening of our youngest child and spoke to the assembled group which consisted of dozens of our Cockney friends, relatives and neighbours.
His words that day caught me on the hop.
My father raised a toast and thanked everyone, not for coming along, or for the christening gifts and cards for his newest grandchild. He thanked the group for accepting me, his son. He thanked them for embracing me into their community, for making me one of them. He thanked them for caring for me and loving me. Dad went on to say it was a great comfort to him and to my mother that I was surrounded by such good people, considering the width of the Atlantic Ocean lay between us.
A decade after he made that toast, my father began to suffer a series of strokes and Alzheimer’s took hold of him. He began to lose what Grace Paley called 'that brainy light.' I made that trans-Atlantic journey to visit him twice since. The first time was to say goodbye. He sat in his wheelchair outside the airport as I unloaded the luggage. I remember turning to look at him from a distance as I walked into the Departure Area; certain it was the last time I would see him alive. But his decline has proved to be not just cruel but lingering.
I crossed the sea a second time, to find him even weaker, more confused. This time, too frail to make the trip to the airport, even with a wheelchair, I spent the few minutes before leaving sitting on the edge of his great reclining chair, telling him that he had been a good father and recalling the stories from my youth that proved my hypothesis. This time certain it was our last conversation in this world. He said nothing. I told my sister the next time I returned; it would be to bury him.
Today, dad, I reciprocate that toast you made in Charlie’s Pub. It is not only Father’s Day this weekend but also my parents’ 56th Wedding Anniversary. These two celebrations resonate strongly in my thoughts a I write.
John Irving said ‘We don’t lose someone all at once, we lose them slowly, over time, piece by little piece’. The final years of dad’s life are in marked contrast to the preceding 7 decades. I have witnessed his sense of social responsibility: his kindness, his creativity, his sensitivity. Likewise I have witnessed his ability to be the most frustratingly obstinate man. Stubborn, bull headed, competitive to his own detriment. As his health declined I found it impossible to watch, the strongest man I had known in my lifetime, the man who taught me to be a man, was child-like, frightened. I was glad for the width of the Atlantic Ocean between us.
My memories of my father are forever forged in those senses of my youth; in the younger, invincible man I remember. The one who emerged from the gates at the local chemical refinery, towel rolled like a fat sausage in his hands; smelling of Old Spice cologne. The smell of pancakes and eggs cooking on a camp stove. Of cold beer after a clambake. Of gasoline and the grass clippings thrown out by the lawnmower. Of peanuts at the ball park.
He is forever the what-seemed eternal car ride down route 295 on a hot summer night after we had watched the Phillies lose again. Windows down, the humid winds of corn fields swirling through the car. The Radio would be on some god forsaken AM country music station, a mixture of static and Johnny Cash in our ears. We said little if we said anything at all. It was enough just to enjoy the ride together.
Ask me what I have learned from my dad and I would say a love and deep respect for sport, a love and deep respect for learning; a love and deep respect for making society better. Attributes I pass on everyday not just to my own children but also to the children I work with. And hopefully those children and my own children will take these notions on and pass them on the next generation. For this is the way of the world. This is what it means to live forever.
In my office at work I have a sign that recalls a West African proverb
“If we succeed it is because
we stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.”
I ask for three minutes of your time, dear readers, to listen to a piece of music. It is a Beatles song recorded by Johnny Cash not long before his death. It is not the strong Cash voice of his earlier work that comes through. Gone is the defiant stubbornness of A Boy Named Sue, the steadfastness of I Walk The Line. Instead what remains is a voice that is physically fragile but with the depth and resonance of a lifetime of experiences, of hard mistakes, of triumphs and tragedies.
This recording will always remind me of dad. That ride down 295 south after the Phillies game. Johnny Cash meets The Beatles and the music of my youth giving way to my adult life in England
I will phone dad today and wish him a Happy 54th anniversary and the same for Father’s Day. He will recognise my voice and will answer in short phrases or single words when prompted and pushed. I will ask him if he is watching the baseball on the TV and if he rates the Philadelphia Eagles chances next season. He might know what year it is, equally he might not.
My father’s weakness illuminates my own weakness. Perhaps in his demise, I sense my own inevitable demise. I do not harbour the emotional strength to visit him in America again and watch him in decline. I prefer to be warm in my memories of him as that stronger and younger figure.
It is a cop-out, I know. It is my only means of coping, I tell myself. I remain stubborn in that position, the same stubbornness that infuriated me when my father displayed it.
I turn to Grace Paley's short story once again and read aloud the final, haunting words:
Of course her son never came home again...
My father took the oxygen tubes out of his nostrils and said, "Jokes, Jokes again."
"No, Pa, it could really happen that way, it's a funny world nowadays."
"No," he said, "Truth first, She will slide back. A person must have character, She does not."
..."How long will it be?" he asked. "Tragedy! You too. When will you look it in the face?"
Keep the Faith,
The Head
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