It has been four years to the day since he died, right here in his home. I don’t remember feeling like this last year, but this year I do. So, what is the this I am feeling? Perhaps it is loneliness, yes, for sure; perhaps regret at all the things we didn’t talk through, yes, that too. As I talk with my kids, his kids, on the subject of parenthood, a difficult role for everyone, no matter the books you read, I realise how little guidance any of us are given. Nowadays, thankfully, the culture has changed for the better. Access to supportive help from enlightened writers and therapists is widely available. Conversations never countenanced when we were young parents are spoken openly and accepted. Parents admit to learning instead of holding fast to what doesn’t work, never did and never will, afraid to lose control of a situation. In my own experience when I visit as Granny, I can see how communication has a flow to it, between a troubled child and a learning parent, and it smiles me. I do remember reading once, when I knew I had been responsible for completely messing up an already volatile situation, that to. say Sorry, Please Forgive Me, without any reference to how the child might have been equally to ‘blame’, and being astonished. Had either of my parents ever said sorry to me, or taken responsibility for their obvious blunder in that volatile situation? Definitely not. In fact, that is quite possibly whyI beat myself up so wonderfully, even now.

Once I had absorbed the fabulous power of saying Sorry, Please Forgive Me to a small person, somewhere down there below me, I had to find the courage to risk rejection. Ah! Now we have it. The biggest fear of all, capped only by finding myself alone in the dusk of an African bush as Hyenas head out on the hunt. I don’t remember if it worked or when, but I never forgot the lesson. Being humble is not for the faint-hearted, to be sure.

Back to this day. He died, and left us. We’ve done ok, most of us. But when the Big Friken Man goes, julst like that, it a definite off pissing. Oh, we knew he was going but that is so not the point. When the gone does it’s gone thing, everyone is stalled. And, even after four years, that influence is a halt in a day, in the day when he took one breath and that was that. A body stilled forever is a something to sit beside, and I am glad I did, although ‘glad’ is not how I felt, nor do even now. What a ridiculous word. Just saying.

I think of him a lot today, the way he made things happen, sudden parties (many), whale encounters, way out there when no other boat had seen anything much, the way he drove me mad over many years, the way he loved our children, awkward and unsure about communicating the deep love he felt. The way he bought me flowers, the way he suddenly looked my way, and I knew I was safe. The bastard in him, the lover, protector, the influence, the everything in my life, dammit.

dammit, Seadog. I am a little drunk.