In October 2002 on an anniversary of my father Ivor's death at age 56, I felt moved to write a memento to share with my family. I had just moved to the Ozarks. Now, on Father's Day in 2009, I'm still here, though with many tough challenges faced in the intervening years. Next month I turn 50, and my father would have turned 75.
This post was triggered today when I read a heart-warming blog by an online friend Lissa Rankin about her own father's early death. You can read that here. The beautiful 'Lone Raven' above appears by kind permission of Marion Rose who lost her own father to cancer aged 57 and has just defeated it herself to paint on past 50. See more about her here.
I've updated and edited my earlier account slightly and a couple of poems ('I wish my father' and 'Black') appear in the next post. I feel blessed by the love I'll always feel for this man, and his ongoing quiet presence in my life.
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Since he died, my father has become the mystery inside. It's over a decade now [written in 2002]. There will always be the sudden rush of loss and grief. I rarely have his photograph in my possession but I have no trouble conjuring him up.
My mother phoned me from the hospital at one am - I had no idea they were there. 'Daddy's alright now, we'll go home soon. He lost his vision so we came into the hospital to check. Will call you when we're home.' I thought: 'My father's going to die.' The premonition still shocks me. Six sudden months later he was gone.
My father and I had gone out for the day together not long before - to a meeting for freelancer editors on the coast - and he'd told me how he'd been feeling oddly thirsty for weeks. That was the first sign. I loved days out with him. He took me on two of his long working trips when I was a teenager.
The agricultural richness of Queensland, Australia, the farmer who could talk while flies crawled over his face, Aida at the Sydney Opera house, going to tea with the ladies in Canberra, walking the green suburbia and thinking I'd like to work in botanic gardens when I grew up.
A visit to Tonga where I saw the king in his dark glasses looking down from the gallery in a whiteboard church; and, in the front row, the statuesque white-haired Tongan woman I wanted to be like when I was 'old'. We lived happily on coffee and avocados for weeks while my mother was in England.
He flew with me from Fiji to Scotland when I exchanged pacific pace for northern vigor and went to study Botany as he had done. He completed the Pathology section of the Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary just before he died - a job that came through my connections - and received a posthumous award.
If only I could remember all that we said on those journeys together. I was learning so much about the world; I don't think either of us talked about our innermost dreams but probably they were being realized. Mostly, I showed my dream stories to my mother who was always encouraging. Still do, still is.
Once I wrote a poem against religion and showed that to my father - I was surprised at how much he appreciated it. He hated the war-mongering of religion but felt it was fine for us to attend Sunday School. My father was always even-handed, and people were attracted to that.
I can't remember him raising his voice or being visibly angered by any of us or anyone. I do remember him talking away to himself in his office whether at work or at home. And being a welcome addition to a party of men or women or both with his bottomless storytelling.
He smoked until he was 40 but I never saw that! And I never saw him drunk though he could play a mean game of darts or pool and drink enough pints to make anyone else falter. Astonishingly, my friends and I loved it when my parents walked in on our parties - they added liberated flair not glare.
Through the things he loved, with a quiet passion, I can discover more about him now that I am 'grown': people, plants, travel, history, music, literature. Those adventurous years with my father and my mother - young working-class Londoners who took the opportunity to spread their wings - were a gift extraordinary.
They took three children on a world journey and kept us as safe and free as any family can be. Reading 'Watership Down' in smelly Rotorua, reciting poems for pocket money on Sundays in my parents' bed, sailing the little yacht SaMaDa in Suva Harbor, returning often to the friendly Cotswold village called Marshfield.
I always thought I'd express my gratitude for family by having children myself, but was filled with a restlessness that didn't settle until too late. Then, my father's spirit took me through the impossible decision to have an abortion. I promised myself I'd study wild herbs, become a green witch instead. I'm moving towards that.
When my father died, I stopped being the 'scientist' I never truly was but didn't stop being grateful for that training. In the months of his illness, I read Elizabeth Kubler-Ross on the cloud-high roof of my penthouse flat - 'Death and Dying' in full sunlight. It felt uncomfortable to be preparing for something inconceivable.
Massaging my father's hands and feet when words ran out led me on a sensual journey beyond words after he'd gone. I studied bodywork and movement and everything alternative. Set off for foreign lands - India, Israel, South Africa and now the USA. Found water and plants and wild places.
My sister and brother-in-law had excelled in their medical training, and took my father through his illness with a stunning combination of pragmatism and sensitivity. I remember the day they came to the flat to tell me what I already knew. He was dying from the malignant cancer in his pituitary that had spread to his spine.
I did not ever hear my father talk of that prognosis or express despair or gloom. If only he could have gone on that last trip to the Pacific he loved (he dreamed of retiring to the Cook Islands). I know now that he prepared himself for the trip that will be last for us all.
In the hospital gardens he told me so many, many stories that I wish I could remember. I typed other memories while he dictated them to me - his vision having been affected by the illness - telling his child of his childhood and her inheritance. It was unbearably touching.
My father's stories, overlay so many secrets to which he was loyal and (my oddest intuition) beholden. Nowadays, after quite a few years of the dog-eat-dog world, the integrity and authenticity of my parents shines a light for me; the value of being generous in deed before word.
My father had seen the manipulations of religion but he shared spirit with my mother. When he knew he was dying, he intrigued us with his private talks with the hospital chaplain and the village pastor who came when he died. We all moved in a delicacy of truths over those months before October ended.
Sometimes, I wish we had talked more at the time but, more often, I appreciate the spaces that are made for each person's acceptance and understanding. Helping my father - soon so weak he could hardly stand - to the bathroom or cuddling up on the sofa were expressions of painful love never to be forgotten.
The 25th of October came and we were all at home, a family again - my father, my mother, my siblings and me - and my brother-in-law. My father had three grandchildren and two more came after he died. He would have loved them as much as he loved all children. We all have parts of him inside us.
We did not sleep but spent that extraordinary night in the familiar front room of Number 16 - my parent's bedroom. My father had requested Schumann's 'Trout Quartet'. My dear brother-in-law gave him the magic of morphine - and then he drifted away from us.
At one point, I told him that I would 'be OK' and have often since felt guilt for the selfishness of those words. My mother asked my father to squeeze her finger and I thought of the song: If you love me say so, If you don't love me say so, If you love me and [can't] say so, Then squeeze my little finger.
A lilting song by Christy Moore called the 'Voyage' served to break the gathering storm clouds in me for many years after: Life is an ocean, love is a boat, In troubled waters it keeps us afloat, When we started the voyage, there was just me and you, Now gathered round us we have our own crew.
All who were able, came to the celebration that ended my father's life earlier than any of us could have imagined. 'Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse', he often said. I am sure though that he would have been handsome at any age. He had curly black hair and a roman nose.
My second husband (now ex) had his mouth, a thing I would never have revealed had he not seen it himself in the portrait my mother had later had painted of my father. Finally, though, I have realized that I will never find my father in my lovers. He is in me.
My father's spirit surprises me often. Perhaps there is no need for a photograph when a person is so deeply embedded. When he dropped the red roses at my mother's feet on the way to his physical resting place, I knew that death is not the last we know of someone.
A little background
My father was born to working-class East Londoners who lived largely in the 'Peabody Buildings' - he was proud of these origins. His father Leonard had 'the knowledge' and drove a London taxi, as well as working as a boiler-maker at the Marmite factory. His mother Mary was a secretary for Guinness, and loved nothing better than swimming which she did every day when she could. Ivor David Firman was their only son.
World War II covered many of his childhood years which were spent with cousins in the country. After National Service he earned places at Nottingham and Cambridge Universities. He'd say proudly that he was the only seaman to be demoted and left the navy with a note saying 'This man lacks intelligence'. My father certainly did not. Bright, charismatic and as charming as any Leo, everyone loved him and vice versa.
He graduated in Mycology and Tropical Medicine after a year in Trinidad where I was conceived. My father's work took us all over the world - Kenya, Fiji, Brazil, New Caledonia, Bhutan. He told us he had been everywhere and done most everything he ever dreamed of as a child when he died. He felt grateful. I feel grateful.
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