My father, the hero

Michelle Thomason - 17 Jun 16

Not many mothers write about their fathers. The sacred bond and the mythologising of parenthood almost always focuses on the mother. Motherhood can make you inclined to reflect more about the relationship with your mother – but that’s a story for another time. This one is about my dad.

My relationship with my dad felt very different to that of my mum. Memories of time spent as a little girl with my dad are not the same. It was the eighties, he was the full time provider of our little family and time spent with my dad stands out as rose-tinted punctuations to the warm and woolly continuity of my childhood memories forged by my mum. Having Dad around was a big deal – not that it was an irregular thing – he was very hands on, very present – it’s just my mum wanted me to know how loved and valued he was. This was never more the case than when he switched jobs and had to spend weekdays at the opposite side of the country, travelling home at weekends to see us. This lasted for a year and I’ll never forget my mum’s sobs each time he left on a Sunday evening. The memory of secretly watching her from the top of the stairs pausing in the hallway to hide the tears and take a deep breath before she got on with the rest of her evening was probably my earliest awareness of the strength of their relationship.

Dad was the one who worked night shifts on Christmas Eve but still managed to build the flat pack desk that I so wanted for Christmas, at six in the morning, before we all woke up. Dad was the one who took me for my first trip on the newly opened Newcastle Metro and let my choose my own Holly Hobbie ring from the department store at the other end. When we got burgled a few years later, that was the one thing that was stolen that really floored me. Dad was the one who bought me all my books, taught me to throw over arm and took me to Sunday cricket matches. He was the one who always picked me up, and, very often, my friends too, from late nights out in my teenage years, when others had to find their own way home. And he always feigned ignorance, wilful or otherwise, about half of what I got up to.

My later teenage years were a more turbulent time and dealing with my adolescent turn-coat moods and ego-centric selfishness didn’t make for a particularly easy ride. He put up with all of this at a time when he must have been going through terrible change himself. My mum had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and had recently started using a wheelchair on a regular basis. Not only was his daughter growing up and about to leave home, but the wife he had always known was undergoing dramatic and life altering changes.

After I left home, the next few years went by in a bit of a blur. I was at university, returning home only for glorified pitstops and to wash my clothes. I can only now feel shame at my lack of awareness of how my parents’ lives were changing. They did their best at disguising these changes but had I stopped to think a little, I would have realised how different things were becoming. My dad became more insular and self contained. Everyone found it hard to talk about what was happening.

It didn’t happen overnight but at some point during these years, my dad stepped out of the background, having spent years appearing on the sidelines of my mum’s social circle. In all the desperate unfairness of my mum’s illness, perversely, he found his ultimate strength of character. Where others may have given up, he did not. He shared his house, his life, with carers, medical professionals and pharmacists, spending his time taking my mum to hospital appointments, respite care and to her regular hair appointments – one of her only luxuries. Yes, he got stressed and depressed but he never gave up.

The day my mum died, he continued to show that selflessness. We had been taking it in turns to stay with her in hospital as her condition worsened. He was the one who happened to be with her when he realised she had not long left. I was on my way there but couldn’t park anywhere near the hospital and, in a panic, I rang him. He ran out, grabbed the keys and took the car from me so I could see my mum. Of course, it was too late, but I got to spend a few precious minutes with her – minutes my dad had given up for me to be with her.

After my mum died, my dad started to become his own person again. No longer defined by his wife’s illness, he still silently reeled as the delicate balance between grieving and finding himself again became his own unique challenge. The unspoken burden of love-driven duty had been lifted off him but it wasn’t an easy passage to establishing his life again. But he did.

When my daughter was born, almost exactly a year after my mum died, he was able to be the kind of grandparent he hadn’t been able to be when my son had been born two years earlier. Living 250 miles apart, distance made it impossible for him to leave my mum on her own and due to a complicated birth leaving me unable to travel, he didn’t meet my son until he was 6 weeks old. For my daughter he met her in her first week. She was quite poorly in the early weeks and I was struggling to deal with her needs and a toddler who was crawling the walls. My dad dropped everything and travelled on a frequent basis to see us in a bid to find new ways to exhaust his two year old grandson whilst I got on with looking after the two year old’s tiny sickly sister.

I like to think they every deep dark cloud has a silver lining and that his role as a grandfather became a more galvanising force in his life – it’s very hard to be insular when there are two small adoring people vying for his attention. Just like he was with my mum, he has been there for me and my children, unfailingly dependable and generous with his time.

I’ll never have the chance to develop the relationship with my mum as a mother myself but I do still have that opportunity with my dad. Whilst I’m sure there will always be a part of him that sees me as that 18 year old girl leaving the family home for the first time, our relationship has evolved. His instinctive paternal protection that I remember as a little girl now extends to my own children and it has made me realise how important and special the bond between a grandparent and grandchildren can be too.

And it doesn’t end there. The dark cloud has another particularly bright silver lining. Since getting remarried to my wonderful stepmum, he has managed to increase his grandchildren lode by four and I haven’t seen him so young and active for a very long time. Margaret Mead, the cultural anthropologist once said “Everyone needs to have access to both grandparents and grandchildren in order to be a full human being” – it’s safe to say my dad has become that full human being.

Michelle Thomason

Michelle Thomason is a mother of two and lives in London

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