Today, five years ago I received a phone call to tell me that my Dad (Bob) had died. I can still recall the moments leading up to that final phone call. The anger, the pain, the disappointment in my older sister for behaving in such a way. Which given that is her personality type, I really shouldn’t have been too surprised.
Still processing
But here I am five years later still trying to process it all. So much has changed over the past five years. And yet in many ways it hasn’t. I haven’t grieved for the man I once called Dad.
I didn’t know him. He didn’t know me. So I’m still at a loss as to how to grieve for him. I am sad that he had been ill, however, given his lifestyle choices of drinking and smoking it was brought on by himself. I am sad that we never really got a chance to call a truce after our last meeting.
Unanswered questions
However, I think it is those unanswered questions that will always remain that bring me the most amount of sadness.
- Why did you start drinking?
- Why did you only turn up occasionally on your visit days?
- Why did you then dump is on your mum when you did collect us on your visit days?
- Why was your latest girlfriend always so much more important?
- Why did you leave it so long before you got back in touch?
- Why did you only talk about yourself when we did talk or meet up?
- Why did you hold on to so much resentment towards my mam, even after you had been divorced for many years?
- And the big one… Why was alcohol more important than me?
There are no answers
I’ll never get answers to these questions. For the most part many of them always come back to him being a chronic alcoholic. Over the years (even before he died) I’ve had people attempt to explain that he had a disease and he could help being the way he was.
Well, I’m calling time on that one. He was a lazy, selfish human being. Alcohol was the easy option. Whereas trying to rebuild a relationship with those he’d hurt or let down was too difficult. And he was always one to take the easy option in life.
I hope he managed to find his own version of happiness at the bottom of a pint glass.
Photo Credit: Kristina Tripkovic
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