A year and a day

Twelve months ago today, I was staggering off the plane at Birmingham airport for the second time in a month. Less than thirty-six hours earlier I had received "that phone call" from the UK to tell me that my father had finally left us.

I had taken some leave and spent a lovely couple of weeks in May with my parents and sibling, visiting my Dad and thinking how well he looked, even though he was very frail and not really aware of things, but at 84 he was holding together pretty well.

The first thing he said to me when I walked into see him was "Gorgeous!" and his face lit up and his eyes shone bright blue. I spent time with my Mother doing the things that we enjoy doing (involving textiles and looking at beautiful things), but I also spent a good bit of time just holding Dad's hand and talking to him.

Dad was a teacher of English at Edith Cowan University until his retirement. He was involved in the music department too, being a teacher of the trombone, and a founding member of the Churchlands Community Orchestra. He told stories, and loved words and history and it's probably part of his gift that I consider myself 'terminally curious'.

One of my favourite memories is of the four of us on holiday singing "The Gas Man Cometh" (or "1000 green bottles on the wall") at the top of our voices in four part harmoney as we traveled by car. I think that this particular Flanders and Swann song is particularly appropriate, given his uncomfortableness with some aspects of modern technology. We played it after his funeral while we ate little sandwiches and drank tea and told each other favourite memories of him. I enjoyed it before, but now it is tinged with the bittersweet memory of saying good-bye to my Dad.