Unanswered questions

Most, if not all, of my older relatives are dead.

My mum died in 1999, my dad in 2011.  My stepdad died many years ago, too.

One of my granddads died before I was even born and my remaining granddad and grandmas have all long departed.

I had an Uncle and Auntie in Rotterdam but I fell out with them when my uncle didn't give a fuck that my mum, his sister, had died.

There might be cousins and other distant relatives out there but I am not going to spend my remaining years trying to find them.  They've never been interested in me before, nor me them.  So let it be.

I was close to my mum.

Neeltje 'Elly' Verburg was born in Rotterdam and met my father Anthony Johansen sometime in the 1950s, presumably when he was visiting the city on some merchant navy ship on which he was serving.  They married - don't know when, don't care - and she came to live in England.

I am guessing they were still a couple when I popped along but I have no memory of him living at our house.

I vaguely remember seeing him occasionally, presumably on leave from said merchant navy, although I can't be certain I'm not remembering seeing sepia-coloured photos of us together.

My mum was not the best educated person in the world but she was streetwise.  We lived together in the marital home, except it wasn't, for many years.  She knew no one save the people she met through work (she always worked, never once went to seek benefits) and my father's parents who lived a mile away.

I went to theirs after school where they fed me until mum collected me and we'd walk home.  She worked in town, massive 10 hour days for little more than poverty money, and her whole life was little more than work, bring me up as best she could and sleep.  It was no life at all.

Meanwhile, my dad sailed the high seas until the late sixties when he never came back.

We kept in touch by way of airmail letters, although I had little interest in his stories and he plainly had no interest in anything I did.  I thought. I was already mind-reading.  

As the years went by, he became more someone who lived in Canada.

My life drifted along aimlessly through school and then to a lifetime dead end job.

Mum couldn't and didn't guide me.  Even as a teenager I was drifting along with no clear idea of where I was headed in life and as an old codger (almost) the song remains the same.

I was happy when she remarried because until her cigarette habit began to wreck her life she was having the time of her life.  I saw her every week and whilst we never once had a serious conversation about anything in real depth, ever, she was a wonderful woman.

My dad came to England every couple of years.  Bearded like all sailors should be with bandy legs and a raucous laugh, he had a glittering career after a mid life relaunch at McGill University whereafter he worked in various high-powered jobs including in the office of the Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

He came to see me, he always wrote.  I occasionally wrote back.

My first significant time with dad was in 1975 when I spend three weeks in Saint John New Brusnwick.  He took his young son to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, the Bay of Fundy and his young son took the train to the Niagara Falls, Toronto and Montreal.

Before I knew it, he was 75.

In 2004, I was invited to his party in Ottawa and merrily I flew to be there.

He had remarried, this time to Joy Phillips who would be the love of his life. I had a week with him and oddly I felt for the first time that he was much more than my dad in name.

His 80th birthday followed and I went to that party too.  

I was struck by the change in him since I had been there before.  Mentally, he was still as sharp as a tack, but the ravages of time had caught up with him and he looked ever so slightly frail.

I talked with him on Christmas Day in 2010 and that was the last time. The next day he was admitted to hospital with pneumonia and despite the optimistic prognoses I had from time to time I feared, knew, the worst.  On 28 February 2011, the worst happened.

I cried once when my mum died and that was when I was calling her brother who, it turned out, didn't give a fuck, but when I arrived at Heathrow Airport to fly to my dad's funeral, I cried every time I spoke to someone.  Check in, security, boarding, stewardesses - I was broken.  Why?

I had not prepared myself but there was something worse: there was unfinished business.

I had no unfinished business with my mum.  Of course I loved her but in her latter days she was a physical mess. Stick thin, unable to walk or go out because of the damage smoking had done to her legs and it was not always good to visit her.  She was in residential care too, a nice place but the whole place, inevitably, stunk of piss.

It turned out that my dad, who never told me how much he loved me, or not loudly enough so I heard, loved me a lot.  He adored my family and was incredibly proud of them.

He loved his grandchildren to bits and they loved him.  And it was all gone.

If I could have one dead relative back it would be my dad.  Not because I loved him more than anyone else, but because I never really knew him until late on in his life.

Anyway, he's not coming back and he hasn't survived his own death to go to heaven, so that part of me is gone forever.

It's a strange thing about life that at one time you are the youngest of the brood and another time you are the oldest.

I don't miss my mum and dad every day and I'm not sure if I even think of them every day either.

I wish they were still here to answer the many questions I never got round to asking but now there's no one who can do that.