A few days ago I went on one of my little trips to Sainsbury’s. I’m not particularly partial to a big shop, little and often is more my style.
As I walked through the green lit barriers that had automatically opened before me I veered to the left only to be arrested by a card stand. On it was the heading ‘Father’s Day 21st June’ and beneath a selection of at least 30 cards to choose from. My light footed breezy air froze, to be replaced by a heavy sensation in my chest.
I really wanted to send my dad a Father’s Day card. Partly because I knew how much it would mean to him. He’d have been so chuffed to have received one, he’d feel special, seen, recognised for the father that he always was, even though for great swathes of time his three children, including myself, were far from being in his life. It’s those little gestures that mean so much.
I carried on with my shopping, heading towards homeware as I thought I needed a ceramic baking dish. It was only on finding them down on the bottom shelf and mulling one over, a kind of dark sage green, that I realised that I already had one, well two actually. I had those glass Tupplewares indoors that I’d brought back from Spain with me, perfect. Right, where’s the bits that I do need? The food shopping. Let’s start with the smoked mackerel and see if there’s a Nectar card special. At £25 a kilo I’d be happy for a reduction. And as I meandered out from one aisle to another there it was again, another Father’s Day card stand.
Shall I just buy one?
Fuck it, I can buy a Father’s Day card for my dad if I want to, what does it matter if he’s dead. Symbolically it would be a beautiful heart felt thing to do; a display of my love to him.
I really miss going to visit him in his Barratt home style 3 bedroom detached house built on the old site of Butlins holiday camp in Clacton. It took me a long time after he died to get the habit out of my head of alternating Christmas visits between my mum in Sussex and my dad in Essex. Amazingly they both had/have their birthdays on 29th December, so one year I’d go to my mum’s for Christmas and then my dad’s for his birthday, (friends for New years), and the following year vice versa; I’d go and stay with my dad for Christmas and then my mum’s for her birthday. It was a whole new concept trying to get to grips with the fact that my dad wasn’t there to be part of the festive season rounds anymore. But now that he wasn’t what did that mean? That I’d stay at my mum’s for longer; from say 24th – 30th December? I just really also wanted to hang out with my dad.
Maybe I could just buy him a card and send it to him anyway.
Funny, that made me laugh. Imagine Judge John who now lives in my dad’s house, okay, his house, now, seeing as he bought it, imagine his face upon receiving the card on his doorstep, picking it up and opening it, he’d probably think me totally bonkers. He’s probably already pissed off with me for covering the whole of the lawn in the back garden with a thousand flowering bulbs, planted for my dad to gaze upon. Sadly dad never made it back home from the hospital to ever see them.
No Mow May. Be more like No Mow Spring for Judge John now.
There’s so many other things I miss about my dad, I could go on and on, and maybe I will, later.
Tiger.On.The.Rock 