So yesterday marked the anniversary of my Dads death. 13 years ago now. My Dad helped to shape me and make me the person that I am, he in anger called me a pig and then when Mum called him out on it said that it stood for Pretty Intelligent Girl. Yet he also taught me the joy of riding a bike and being active, how to use a chain saw and how to drive, as well as was the one I would ask ‘Why did Stuart and Carl molest me?’
When I was 13 I told my Dad he couldn’t die until after he had walked me down the aisle, of course I have changed since then and don’t want or feel the need to be walked down the aisle I am not someone’s to be given away.
Next year on the 26th of April Dad will of been dead for over half my life.
It doesn’t mean I don’t miss him because I do, however I forget what his voice sounds like and I have patchy memories of him. I remember some of his stories that he told about his childhood and teenage years or about my older siblings, but a lot of them have faded over time.
It took nearly 10 years of Dad being dead before I could look at a photo of him, actually look not just focus of someone else in the photo, and to actually have a photo of him in my room in the house.
I don’t know if it was because I was the last person to see my Dad alive or that seeing his body in the coffin freaked me out quite a lot. It’s taken some getting used to Mr Geek sleeping with his mouth open and snoring as it reminds me of Dad with his mouth open having trouble breathing laying in the hospital bed. It’s also why I am not a fan of Darth Vader and the way he sounds like he has death rattles.
I miss my Dad and I wish I had of got to know him as an adult, I know he was not a perfect man and he had many imperfections, if he were alive today I most likely would not be in Wellington and my life would of turned out dramatically different.
I miss sitting up on a Wednesday night when That’s Life and Take5 were brought with the weekly groceries and we sat up doing the puzzles and then watching the wrestling (WCW). I miss pratterling on to him and his reassuring me that everything would be okay, I miss him looking the other way when I took boards from the wood pile that were destined to be kinderling and making a bookshelf with them and him leaving the hammer and nails out for me.
I miss him taking me in the paddock bomb with Jade in the back teaching me how to drive manual and telling me not to crash in to the house or the trees around the house, Jade giggling with laughter in the back. Or. riding our bikes down to the servo to get the paper and racing Dad down the hill, or when we lived in the city and Dad had a catalog run and getting to go with him and deliver catalogs, to explore the streets and to have a break at a seat, him having a smoke and me riding my bike in circles and him encouraging me and laughing as I circle to close to the ground.
I don’t miss the fights Mum and Dad had though, or Dad lying about giving up smoking, I don’t miss that Dad had spent money on smokes and we were with out electricity for a couple of days again.
My future children will never know there Pop and will never get to hear his tall tales and the way he would tell a joke, nor will they see the way the back of his neck crisscrossed in diamond patterns from wrinkles.
Or the way that Dad would wear a beany rain hail or shine because he was starting to bald, or his favourite jumper which I can no longer remember what it looks like just that it had a stripe across the middle and a pattered, or the way that he smelt like Blue Stratos.
And I wonder sometimes about that saying that woman are attracted to men who remind them of their Fathers and what my Dad and Mr Geek having in common. and what my Dad would say or think of Mr Geek and I, if he would be proud of me and all that I have done, what he would say about me moving to another country for the man I love.
The sprig of 13 Rosemary branchs I got today for Dad.
One for each year he has been gone <3
