To my dad

It's been 15 years

Me with my dad, Roger. I’m about 13 here, which means my dad was around 45.

My father died 15 years ago today.

People said he was a gentleman, and a gentle man, and he was. Apart from the occasional bout of road rage, he would deal with most situations politely and calmly. That’s not to say he didn’t have strong opinions or vices – he definitely did.

He got pissed off about final salary pension schemes and the ‘nanny’ state; he liked a whisky at the end of the day and he smoked cigars. My sister and I ran campaigns urging him to stop, putting home-made posters up around the house – and on one holiday we chopped up all his cigars in a sink full of water.

I can hold on to the fact that I had a happy childhood and I know my dad adored us - me, my mum and sister. My dad worked quite a lot but would join us at my grandparents’ home for several days during school holidays. On their Oxfordshire lawn he tried to teach me to catch and throw (though I still close my eyes and clap my hands like a seal whenever I try to catch something) and during the summer in Cornwall he showed me how to skim stones on pebbly beaches.

He was generous, placing the winning bid on a day’s work experience at a TV station for me at a charity auction, while he also urged me to save money and move it around when interest rates changed.

My father saw that I had a brain that was both science-y and arty when I was choosing my A-Levels, and, years later when I started training as a business journalist, typed out a document about how to read a profit and loss account.

Sometimes he dropped me off at my office on the way to his, or met me in town (aka central London) at a pub for a pie dinner afterwards. He would be friendly to my boyfriends, even if they sat in his favourite chair reading his paper, but never pushed me to ‘settle down’ or questioned my choices.

We only had 31 years of each other’s company, and I would love to know what he’d have thought of the world over the past 15. What of iPhones, Brexit, Donald Trump, Covid and Boris Johnson?

The iPhone would have been ’whizzy,’ as he called technology such as his car phone, and I can visualise him reading the papers or doing brain exercise games on an iPad.

I remember him thinking Johnson ‘clever’ because of his weekly newspaper column (this is not a view I inherited); he disliked EU bureaucracy but worked in a business that relied on trade so may have been torn over Brexit.

Trump I think he would have called an ‘oaf’ and Covid would have been frightening, but also an opportunity to spend quality time in the garden.

Sat navs and Google Maps would have really pissed him off (he was an analogue navigation expert), but he would have loved the shows on Netflix and being able to listen to the Beatles endlessly on Spotify.

Feeling I know what he’d thought of these things reassures me that I knew him well, and that gives me comfort.

But when you lose someone so close, you never get ‘over’ it. Life has two parts: the time with them in it, and the time without, like a kind of ‘after death’ or AD.

You’re left trying to navigate the AD bit without knowing how, never making sense of the fact that their physical being is gone, that you can’t give them a hug or ask what something means, or to tell you the story of how they came to London and met your mother.

As the AD years pass it doesn’t get easier, because your time without them simply gets longer and so they seem further away somehow.

I would love my dad to have met his grandchildren - my nephews - and for them to learn from Grandpa Roger. He might have taught them about motor racing, cricket or bridge, or taken them wine-tasting when they were old enough.

I would like him to know that I became a features editor at the business magazine he used to read and bring home from the office for me, and that I have written for the Guardian, Time and National Geographic. I’d like to tell him I started this newsletter to help give a voice to childfree/childless people - as well as to encourage more honest conversations about life.

So, Daddy, if you’re reading this, I hope you’re OK up there, and that I’ve made you proud.