Confessions of a Daughter

A soft breeze brushes past my skin as I wrench open the wooden window frame, allowing years of third-hand cigarette smoke and stuffy food smells to drift out along with my memories. He hadn’t left this singular room in years, save for daily needs and the very occasional trip to the hospital, and it shows. The desk is littered with forgotten trash, piles of papers and books occupying every inch of the peripheral book cases and, in the corner of the brick ledge surrounding the hearth, stands a sizeable collection of bottles that hasn’t been touched for a very long time.

Also dotted around the room are the few mementos of who I was to him – a lion statue, crudely carved out of a bar of white soap, a voodoo-like woollen puppet made out of bright red yarn and an old picture of me and my mother, ever so slightly bent and sunworn. I fleetingly wonder if they are there because they meant something to him or if he’d simply forgotten their existence in the first place, but it’s a neutral observation and I know the answer wouldn’t bother me overmuch either way.

The air in the room is heavy with memories. Watching my dad’s favourite detective shows while eating our steaming dinners from the worn, wooden carrying platters my mum had just carried in from the kitchen. That one school holiday he gave me a summer job cataloguing his antique book collection on an app that wouldn’t be worthy of the name nowadays. Or playing along with one of our favourite TV quizzes, my mum, dad and I pitting ourselves against each other, although of course he would always win!

We’ve been on a journey, my father and I. It started as a lovely adventure when I was little. I remember cuddles in bed, day trips to funfairs, museums and abandoned castles and those two trips to the miniature village that never materialised because I had a stomach bug both times. I also remember lying on the couch, sick with the flu, being cared for with cheese on toast and a cold compress, the TV blaring out my favourite cartoons in the background.

As I approached my teenage years, our road became forked. I was no longer interested in doing as I was told and his staunchly conservative nature often clashed with my youthful, careless whims. More often than not, we were ghosts in the same house. Me, upstairs with music or books, him in this room he so very rarely left. As I got older he took me for a drink once or twice and I guess that was his way of seeking connection, reaching out. It’s a shame we were always so far apart we could only get our fingertips to touch, never our hands to grab hold of each other.

Adulthood saw me and him in different countries. Just like the red and yellow brick roads leading to Oz, we continued to walk our own paths and our steps were very rarely in sync. A few times a year, we brushed shoulders – an email with a shared joke or some work passed on to me. Sometimes he’d buy me things, expensive things like laptops and adult Lego sets. I paid a lot of attention to this particular proclivity of his over the years.

I remember reading an online article once about the 7 love languages, how different people show love in a variety of different ways. There are huggers and touchers, people who like to say “I love you” out loud and those who thrive on what professionals would call Acts of Service. My father was none of those. On the surface, you might even be forgiven for thinking that the man didn’t have the capability of showing love at all. But I know that’s not true. I know it, because I’ve given it plenty of thought in recent years. The expensive gifts, the funny YouTube videos, the in-joke references harking back to the days of my childhood – those were his own unique signs of seeking connection, of fatherly love. I imagine they really were the only way he knew how.

I am glad I got those last few hours with him at the hospital, while he clung to the last little stretch of his life. He’d looked so different then, with the oxygen mask covering his face, his hair and beard much greyer than I remember, so different to the man who made me cheese on toast and took me to the Museum of Military History, so different and yet in so many ways the same. I am glad I put my hand on his shoulder and said a silent goodbye to the man who might never truly have been my dad in the ways I wanted him to, but was still my father.

It is those memories that I cling to as I survey this room of lost and unfulfilled dreams, mourning, more than him, the man that he never was. I pick up a picture of my younger self and smile and wonder what he saw when he looked at this image of me. The mystery of his feelings weighs heavy on my heart. So does the knowledge that I fill in the blanks with my own desires and perhaps not with anything akin to the truth.

Outside, the sun is setting and the air grows colder around me. I shiver a little against the evening chill drifting in through the half-open window and reach out to close the heavy frame and push the lever shut once again. With a sigh, I turn to step away from the desk and leave the room, but I can’t resist turning around in the doorframe and casting my eyes over the oh so familiar surroundings one last time. “Bye dad”, I whisper, and as I do so I feel a soft breeze raise goosebumps on the skin of my arm. I can’t help but glance up to the wall behind his old office chair. The window is still firmly closed.