It’s hard to find the celebration in an unexpected death.
When an ending is sudden and unforeseen, you are caught wholly unprepared. One day things are this way: life is moving, plans are in place, this person is there, the future has a course. Then in moments, seconds, hours, the whole shape of everything shifts so fast. You are left, staring at holes that cannot be patched. Squinting into a bright light of realisation: nothing will ever be as it was.
Our dad died, unexpectedly, on a random Wednesday in September. Four days before he and I were due to meet for lunch. The day before his car tax was due. On the day of his penultimate Church Choral Society practice. He left behind his wife, 3 children, 3 grandchildren, a sister, nieces, nephews, in-laws, friends, a middle aged, well-behaved black lab...
There was no easing over the Rubicon. He was there and then he was not. He sat down to his usual mid-morning Courier and mug of coffee. Then he was simply… not alive any more. It was shocking. World-ending.
In death, there is "Stuff Folk Say". Neat phrases of condolence, commiseration, or comfort. Convention dictates acknowledgement, so folk have to say SOMETHING. We were generously offered well-worn words over the phone or cups of tea; or sometimes awkward words, from those who just-don’t-quite-know-what-to-say. 'So sorry for your loss.' 'What a shock.' 'Such a lovely man.'
But neat phrases and well-worn words were so unlike Dad. We lost him, somehow, in all the niceties.
It was comforting, then, that when it came to his Eulogy, we began to remember him as he was. Not polite and neat and mourned and dead; but joyful and messy and true and alive. We remembered:
The rapture that good classical music brought him.
His appreciation of a decent malt.
His cheese addiction.
His pride in us (often underlined in the groaningly awful Annual Christmas Card Letter, where our every achievement got bragging rights).
His absolute inability to tell a short story (SO much context and backstory before you got anywhere near the point).
His godawful handwriting (making shopping lists and the diaries he wrote completely impenetrable).
His habit of saying 'Aye. Right then' indicating he was about to change the subject or get up to go somewhere.
His open facial expressions - joy, disapproval, concentration - he’d have been a bloody awful poker player.
His advice: 'Dinnae be so hashy-bashy' if you were attacking something with great gusto or hazarding potential injury.
His ex-rally-driver need for speed whenever he hit a motorway.
The terrible, tuneless whistling that erupted from the garage when he was fixing something.
The never-ending car fixing projects: Morris Minor, Beetle, the canary yellow Mark 1 Golf GTI…
How you could never leave without your car being hoovered and washed.
His insanely bushy eyebrows; one pointing up, the other down.
How he chewed his tongue when he concentrated.
His deep knowledge of the land and the soil and the seasons, meaning a running commentary on the state of crops or the ploughing decisions of a farmer when you drove anywhere with him.
His canine-magnet status: all dogs doted on him.
In remembering him, we reclaimed him, celebrated him. The pain of his death became softened as we revisited his life; well-lived and generously shared. Beyond the soft, well-worn words of sorrow, lay the sharper, funnier, more Dad-shaped stories… and it was here we found him and celebrated him again.
The hundred small things, wonderful and annoying and imperfect and beloved and wise, that made up the man. The realisation that those hundred small things became embedded in us and his grandchildren. The legacy of love he bestowed.
Because of him, his children all have a working knowledge of engines. We are practical; able to fix bike punctures, paint walls, or (less practically) shoot a clay pigeon in a freezing wind. We have inherited an inability to skip a cheese board, a taste for whisky and a rambling story-telling style. In us, is an intergenerational characteristic of being fearless in the world and believing that being polite to waitresses shows the mark of good manners and a good person. That’s how we were raised, that’s how we raise ours.
That’s a legacy to celebrate.
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