Fathers Day

I do like to read people’s messages about fathers day, mothers day and birthday and in memoriam pieces too.

I am always touched by those messages of love and even more so by messages of love and loss.  They are personal, poignant and when people decide to share them with us, I love it.

Now me, I don’t do anniversary remembrances.  And that’s just me.

My dad died on 28^th February 2011, my mum died in 1999 (no idea of the date October, was it?).

I was, for most of my life, much closer to my mum, both physically and spiritually (not in the religious sense), but as the years went by my dad and I found each other in so far that two disparate folk could ever be.

My mum died suddenly; my dad’s death dragged out over two months, half the world away.  I can’t even remember the year in which my stepfather died, nor any of my grandparents.  Is it because I don’t care?  Of course not.

I cried once when my mother died and that was when I rang her brother to tell him the news.  Oddly, he didn’t seem at all bothered and after a subsequent awkward exchange of letters (ask your parents, kids) I concluded he didn’t seem bothered because he wasn’t.

I arranged the cremation, chose the music and moved on, occasionally cheered by the memories, occasionally dispirited by what I perceived was a lack of fulfillment in her life.  But maybe that was my perception of what her life could and should have been.  She never actually told me she wasn’t fulfilled. 

And I moved on.

Of course I think about her from time to time and remember the love and sacrifices she made but I never felt melancholy or felt the need to make visits to the crematorium. What would flowers achieve?

I have no religious superstitions so maybe that was it.  I never believed she would survive her own death and that we would somehow meet again so I must have decided, sub-consciously, to not waste time hoping for it.

I honestly don’t think about her on mother’s day any more than I think of her on any other day of the year. But I don’t begrudge for one moment those who do.

My dad is a different story.

For years, we were not that close – hardly surprising, you might think, given that he lived in Canada – but in latter times we grew much closer.

In 2004 I attended his 75^th birthday and five years later his 80^th. 

So the last time I saw him was in 2009.  As I arrived at Ottawa airport to fly home, I never dreamed for one moment it would be the last time I would see him.

Two years later and I was flying across the pond to attend and speak at the celebration of his life (he didn’t do funerals, least of all his own).

Do I miss him?  Very much, of course I do.

Do I wish he was still with us?   More than anything.

So should I be having sentimental thoughts and shedding tears of what was and what could have been?

I cried all the way to Canada, off and on, following his death.  I reasoned that this was because I had not prepared my mind for all the steps that I would be taking.  I was a blubbering mess in departures, an angst-ridden wreck.

Perhaps the devout gain comfort from their faith and they believe they will meet the dead and when they too are dead?  Good luck to them, I suppose, but the comfort doesn’t make it true.

Sometimes I walk through the beautiful churchyard near our house – it leads to the railway station – and I see people tending the graves of loved ones and laying flowers.

It’s rather sweet and, I guess, fulfills a need.  A need to connect, a need to hang on to someone who has died, perhaps?  I’m not going to knock it.

So it’s fathers day today, the day when shops make a fortune from people buying things to express their love for their dads, just like Christmas really.

The less cynical might say it’s a day to celebrate dad, dead or alive.

I’ll be in the less cynical camp for once.

Stephen Fry

I was both saddened and heartened to learn of Stephen Fry's admission that he had attempted suicide last year.

Saddened that such a brilliant man should have been so ill that he would even contemplate such a thing and yet at the same time heartened that he felt able to reveal it to others.

Why so?

I have followed, as a TV viewer and a reader, his glittering career and marvelled at his humour and intelligence.  And his openness as a gay man and as a manic depressive.

It cannot have been easy.

He 'came out' as gay at a time when it was, shall we say, less fashionable and came out as suffering from a bi polar condition when the subject is not only unfashionable and, moreover, remains taboo for a lot of people.

"What," say some, "Has someone like Fry got to be depressed about?  He's rich, he's talented.  What more could a man want?  Snap out of it."

Those of us with less extreme mental issues have been here before, hearing the ignorant pontificate on illnesses they don't understand or even wilfully misunderstand.

I have had it before, although not to the depths that he has plumbed.

"What on earth are you depressed about?  You've got everything!" and of course I have, or very nearly, but mental illness shows no favours.

And there's the difference between happy and sad because with depression you can be both at any given time.  

A psychotherapist once told me that depression, or more generally, mental illness is the great unknown in society.  It's the unspoken unknown too because even today many people - and many people do suffer in silence - dare not mention its name.

In recent years, governments of both colours have allowed provision on mental health to wither on the vine and things are now worse than ever.

There are anti-depressants for most people, anything for the well off and nothing much for people with more than minor issues.  That's not to say that depression for the well off is any better, it's just that some people can afford the extortionate levels of private care.

Stephen Fry's private hell becoming public benefits us all because if he can come out, then anyone can.