WAITING FOR POZZO

I have become my father.

Not the Conservative voting, conservative-living, Roman Catholic & god fearing, catholic-living, militarised & militaristic, regimented, regimentally-living, Scotland supporting rugby fan, with a love for Jason Bourne and Seymour-Hoffman movies.
But a poor facsimile of him.

The him that liked to put things in order.
The him that labelled everything.
The him that never wasted food, always recycled, cleaned his drains fastidiously, and always blew in his shoes.

I don’t blow in my shoes.

My father blew in his shoes out of habit, every day before putting them on.
This was as a result of once putting his bare foot into a desert boot (in a desert), to find it was the shady resting place of a huge black scorpion the size of a lobster.

Old habits die hard.
My father died in 2018.

I never really saw eye-to-eye with my father.
I was a mummy’s boy.
He sent me to military boarding school. Mum picked-up the pieces every term when I cried down the telephone, homesick to my frozen bones.

But unlike mum, dad got better as he neared The End.
Mum was suffocated by that bastard disease called ‘Dementia’. And we all breathed a sigh of relief when she escaped to the Other Side.

Dad on the other hand died slowly.

Knowingly, incrementally, and of course - fastidiously.

He put everything in order, made sure we had little to do when he was gone, marvelled at new technology, and opened-up about stuff we never knew before......
His first love.
His own mother’s involvement with Irish Republicanism.
His real political beliefs, and how he thought David Cameron was a twat.
His Catholicism.
His regrets.

No-one enjoys the process, but I took so much from being with my father in those last few months of his long and very particular life.
I have also become particular.
I notice how my ticks and foibles mirror his, whether I like it or not.

I have become my father. ************************************
Here is the first episode in David Sedaris’ new BBC radio series.
Like Sedaris, I found my relationship with my father was strained and uncomfortable for most of his life.
I found him belligerent, unforgiving and diametrically-opposed to what I honestly believed.
Until 'The End'.

I cried several buckets of tears listening to this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001jcb3