Theme of the Week 13 – If I could bring one person back from the dead and have a conversation with them, who would it be?

This is a hard because there is  more than one person I would like to do that with, but if I have to pick one it would be my dad.

Dad died when I was 15. The year before my parents had moved from my hometown to a different part of the country and I was having a hard time coping. I hadn’t wanted to go. I was an only child and leaving my friends and my hometown broke my heart. I tried to make the best of it but I didn’t settle in school at the new town and ended up dropping out just before my 15th birthday. You could leave school at 15 in those days and Dad talked the education people round into not doing anything as I was almost old enough to leave anyway. But it affected my relationship with the only local friend I had made as she thought I was truanting and stopped talking to me, and then all of the children in the road starting blanking me.

It was at this time that we learned Dad had lung cancer. We were all devastated and Mum was far to upset and involved with caring for Dad to notice what I was going through, so I became difficult. Mum and I had a lot of rows which didn’t help Dad. Mum kept talking as though Dad would get better but, after a brief improvement, following radiotherapy he went downhill and I knew he was dying. We never talked about it. Neither Mum or Dad ever admitted he would die. After 8 months he went into hospital. I visited him once but after that I just couldn’t go. This made Mum angry. She told me he had said not to make me if I didn’t want to go and I took this to mean he knew I didn’t care, which couldn’t have been further from the truth. He died 2 weeks later.

I couldn’t even face going to his funeral. Until then Mum had never allowed me to go to funerals even though I had wanted to go to those of my grandparents. Now she did want me to go but I couldn’t. So she went with her sister who was staying with us. There was no one else there. My parents hadn’t had time to make local friends and our old friends and relatives all lived a long way away. I felt so angry that my wonderful father had such a bleak send off and I hadn’t been able to go. I felt he may even have survived if I hadn’t caused those rows.

So I would like him back for just one conversation to tell him how much I loved him and what a special influence he has had on my life and how I have kept him near me. I would tell him about his grandchildren, that I named my eldest son for him. I would tell him about my life especially how I worked for 2 years at The Royal Opera House in London. He loved opera which I couldn’t understand at all when I was young. I would tell him how I got married on the nearest Saturday to his birthday, March 1st and filled the church with daffodils, my way of having him there. I would tell him about my love of gardening, especially roses which he loved too, and how I planted a red rambling rose, his favourite, in the corner of my garden one year on his birthday.

I hope wherever he is he does understand I was just a moody teenager. I think he does because one night a few weeks after he died I woke in the night and went to get a glass of water, and I saw him standing there in his favourite purple jumper. He wasn’t floating or see through or anything, just there like normal and he said ‘It’s alright, I understand everything now,’ then he just went. I could have hallucinated it but I know it wasn’t a dream, as Mum suggested, because the water was on my bedside table in the morning. So maybe he did understand and wanted to tell me. I hope so.