A birthday tribute to my Dad

A birthday tribute to my Dad

At the rugged north end of the island of Tresco, Isles of Scilly, 21 June 2013


WRITTEN ON 28 JUNE 2017


Your parents’ birthdays — two of the first significant dates you ever show an interest in or remember as a child. Tomorrow, on Thursday 29th June 2017, my Dad would have turned 69. My Dad’s birthday is fixed in my memory. I didn’t need to put tomorrow in my calendar — I have felt it coming, all week, with a sense of dread and unshakeable sadness. On Friday 21st June 2013 my Dad and I went on a spontaneous day out to the island of Tresco in the Isles of Scilly, joined later in the morning by my sister Bryony. This was the day after my Dad had returned, brimming over with a sense of wonder and joy, from a dream holiday to Norway (a country that he fell in love with and wished to explore further). We made our first ever visit to the Ruin Beach Café, and informally saw our day out on Tresco as an opportunity to quietly celebrate his birthday together eight days early.


Less than four weeks after the day out on Tresco my Dad received news that, despite looking and feeling well, he was in fact very far from being in a stable state of health. A year later, in June 2014, my Dad’s cognitive functions had been so severely reduced by metastatic malignant melanoma that he was no longer capable of deciding anything spontaneously. — My sister had to feed him his birthday cake (which I find a torturous image) and, when he made it out of bed, he could not walk unaided and was days away from needing a wheelchair. One year and nine weeks after the day out on Tresco my Dad’s sea air-filled lungs had taken their last breath and his enormous heart had stopped beating forever.


That’s enough of the depressing facts. One undeniable fact is that my Dad thoroughly enjoyed life. Here are ten things that he might have done as part of a celebration of his birthday tomorrow:

1. Take a walk through pretty nature.
2. Breathe in the fresh air and enjoy the breeze blowing in his face.
3. Go for a cycle ride.
4. Listen to some wonderful music — perhaps classical music and rock/blues during the daytime, and jazz in the evening.
5. Engage in lively conversation and laughter with friends and acquaintances.
6. Consume freshly-baked homemade cake.
7. Drink some bubbly, and beautiful white, rosé or red wine.
8. Enjoy a delicious, leisurely meal with loved ones.
9. Relax after dinner whilst watching a stimulating film.
10. Quietly reflect, with heartfelt gratitude, on all the blessings in his life.


I will certainly make sure that I do every single one of these things over the coming couple of days and weekend, and may even share (!) the homemade cake and enjoy live jazz in a park fifteen minutes’ walk from my apartment. As Carl Jung, the great Swiss psychiatrist, said, ‘The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness’.

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