Do not go gentle into that good night

My father died today, late in the evening, after work, three days short of his 57th birthday.

He closed the shop at 10 o'clock, sat a while in the sitting room, and then went to make a cup of tea in the kitchen. My mother heard him fall, and rushed in to find him already dead. He had had a heart attack, though whether before or after falling, nobody knows.

His own father had died just three months earlier, in the dark days of January. He had had to go into a home as my mother, who had had a mastectomy that month, was unable to look after him at home.

I was living in Nottingham, newly married and with a baby, and doing a post-grad course.

In those days, calling home involved waiting at a phone box, and my mother had no way to get in touch with me quickly. A policeman came in the early hours of the morning, woke us, and gave me the news. He had it written down on a scrap of paper.

I remember howling. Not crying, but howling: a single, visceral, feral howl. 

His birthday was the 22nd April. To celebrate his becoming a grandfather, we had bought him a grandfather clock. He had always wanted one, but rarely spent money on himself. We had little money at the time, but it seemed like the right moment. 

By chance, the clock had to be delivered early, and it came around the 13th. When it arrived I had to keep my father away from the surprise while it was being set up. He heard the bell tinkle and guessed.

He had the clock for a week before he died, and I have been so pleased down the years that a confusion of dates had such a happy outcome.

The last time I saw him was at Sheffield station, when he took me down to the train after the clock incident. We shook hands over the roof the car, left hand to left hand: he had lost his right arm to polio as a child.

I went onto the platform and he was gone.

He died in 1971, when I was 20. 

There were signs, and I did not read them. In the exuberant myopia of my life beginning, I had not noticed that his was ending.  

My mother had written to me early in March 1971:

It does seem a difficult time, at the moment, but once the treatment is over, I shall feel better, and Dad won’t worry so much. I try very hard to keep bright for him, to cause him as little anxiety as possible.

Dad is not worse because he is having a day in bed, but I think a rest from the shop will do him good both mentally and physically.

Somehow, somehow, I did not recognise their pain, did not feel their distress.

Now 65, I feel that I never really knew him. Certainly not as an adult anyway. And he never saw his grandchildren grow, though he did meet my daughter briefly. I wish I could somehow have repaid his gentle kindnesses, or at least let him know that I would think of him so very often. Let him know that eventually I might show promise.

Until quite recently I carried his voice in my head, and could hear it clearly. A couple of years ago, it faded from memory, and though I can remember the funny things he said, I can't hear the intonation. 

I always remember him this week, remember his birth and his death, and the happy part in between that was my childhood.