Mount Olympus is the connection between Earth and the Divine. An otherworldly realm in which immortals exist and roam. It is sort of fitting, then, that this is where my sisters and I went on holiday the week before the third anniversary of when my Dad died. Anniversary always feels a strange word to use in this context. Anniversary is usually preceded by the word ‘happy’; a cause for joyous celebration. Traditionally, three years of marriage would be a gift of leather. There is no such pomp and pageantry in anniversaries of death.
It was purely accidental that we found ourselves at the foot of mighty Olympus. The holiday was planned, but my lack of knowledge of Greek geography was all coincidence. For now the third year running, one of my sisters and I have taken a trip to Greece around the 28th May. This time, however, it was not two but us three sisters making the annual pilgrimage.
Looking for signs has become involuntary. The last two years, we’ve lucked out. In Corfu, someone paid for our meal and in Rhodes, we ended up with a half-board package that we hadn’t booked. Thanks, Dad! No freebies this time, though threads of his presence were felt all the same. An instrumental version of Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday came on over the speakers one evening at dinner. I’m not sure I’ve ever actually listened to the song, but I knew the tune. In my mind, I could hear him singing to us as kids. A memory so visceral yet easily dismissed. How could I have known all those years ago that a Cliff Richard song would provide me with such a poignant moment of comfort?
When we were sunbathing, I remarked on how the clouds looked like feathers. As though they’d been painted with the soft, slight strokes of a brush held in an uncertain hand. A message desperately trying to be relayed right there in the sky. Clouds often take on spiritual meaning. Wispy cirrus clouds are believed by some to be a connection between Heaven and Earth. Maybe grief really is the thing with feathers.
Morning and night, when I wash my face, I throw my towel over my shoulder. On holiday, my sister remarked on how it reminds her of our Dad. She’s told me before, but it still made me smile. After work in the evenings, our Dad would come home, get changed out of his shirt and tie, and into an old graphic tee. A tea towel would be slung over his shoulder for the remains of the day. It was probably because of the copious amounts of never-ending drying up that came from feeding a family of six. Or maybe he had unfulfilled dreams as a kitchen porter. But he taught me well. I can confirm a towel over the shoulder to help stop the water from running down your neck makes the experience of washing your face much better.
Sometimes you think you’re safe. You are entirely unsuspecting that a certain book, TV show or film will trigger emotions you are actively trying to suppress. The thought doesn’t even cross your mind. I started listening to the audiobook of These Precious Days by Ann Patchett, a collection of essays published four years drawn from different corners of life experiences. The first essay, Three Fathers, is about the relationship she had with her father and two step-fathers. It’s written after all of their deaths, which occurred within three years of each other.
Oh, relevant pieces of work, how you deliberately seek me out!
I find it impossible not to do the maths and work out how old she was. How much more time she had than I did. She was 51, that’s twenty-five extra years that I had. I have a pang of jealousy that pulls my body taut and sets my jaw. It passes.
“I took the things I needed from my fathers and turned them into stories.” Me too, Ann, me too.
The first twelve months after his death were ones of observation. Finding out what and when the more predictable triggers are likely to be, and how the emotions manifest. The following two years, the patterns have remained mostly the same.
It started a few weeks ago. I woke up one morning, gasping for breath at the realisation it would soon be three years. Three years! I find it hard not to let my mind run wild with possibilities of ifs and buts and maybes at the best of times. Immediately, my thoughts went straight to the gap, that ever-widening chasm between the way life looked when he died and the inevitable passing of time. How the shape of my day-to-day life has altered in small doses that collectively make for big change. How my ability to draw him from memory has already started to wane, ever so slightly. It takes more concentration to visualise the contours of his face, his voice.
Would he still recognise me? Not by face but by character. I’m only just starting to fill out my edges, to affirm who I am. But his knowledge of me forever stopped when I was 26, and so I will increasingly become unknown to him.
Next came the breakdown at karaoke. Someone had decided to sing My Way by Frank Sinatra. The exit music we chose for my Dad’s funeral. A song that, for the most part, I have been able to avoid. A song that I am now completely and utterly defenceless against. I fled. Outside, I failed at holding back big, blubbering, heaving sobs. The ugly, desperate, wailing kind. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried that freely, loudly, or unashamedly. The emotion poured out of me. I haven’t been able to cry since.
Then, the Father’s Day emails began landing often and ominously. It’s nearly here! Don’t forget! A cruel twist of fate for him to die so close to the time that everyone is forcibly told to think about their fathers. Trust me, I don’t need the reminder. In therapy, I talk about anger, and we’ve agreed that often mine can manifest in ways that are “disproportionate”. Steam from a pressure cooker that hisses before the pan bubbles over; the final straw. I don’t care about the emails. They are, however, something tangible I can direct my energy towards. And being angry is easier than being sad.
As children, significant dates carry with them a certain mystical quality that cannot be replicated in adulthood. Christmas day, your birthday, maybe even Easter. They didn’t even feel like days at all. They became something separate, suspended from reality. In hindsight, I also grieve the loss of this power. Inevitably, without the magic, important dates become days like any other. I will get up and brush my teeth. Have coffee. Take my vitamins. People will go to work, ride the tube, make ham sandwiches and wrap them in tinfoil for lunch. They’ll step in puddles, listen to podcasts, and think about what to have for dinner. They’ll will piss me off. They’ll go about their days as normal, and the contrast is jarring. Stop all the clocks! So I retreat. I hunker down and take refuge in solitude. Grief is like an invisible elephant in the room. One unseen by others that follows you around and then insists on you giving them a piggyback. It’s heavy, exhausting, and makes you very short-tempered.
I try to think of all the other significant dates that are yet to come. Like my brother’s wedding next year. Birthdays of people I haven’t yet met. It’s too hard to muster the effort for any further positivity.
And, of course, I am not the only one who lost their Dad. Just over a month ago, I was in the kitchen of our family home with my sister. She said that she’d recently gone for a walk on a familiar well-trodden route. With a slip of the tongue, “I’ll phone dad”, she thought. Logic is absent when you’re on autopilot. In that split second it takes for your brain to catch up, he is still here and he hasn’t died. Even three years later, habits are hard to break. In circumstances that defy all reason, a child will still long to hear their Dad’s voice. It is not an equation to be solved. It is something that will persist, eternal.
Really beautiful, thank you for writing this.