What’s a Decade?

Ten Years Without the Old Man

I have been thinking about my dad a lot recently. That’s not to say I don’t generally, but more so of late. Today marks ten years since he died. April 28th. A full decade, which feels at the same time like an unfathomable amount of time and also like no time has passed. I don’t really know.

It is a strange thing to realise that the time since his death now comfortably exceeds the time I knew him as anything close to an adult. I think my age, and the proportion of my life that has passed, probably has something to do with that sense of time distortion / dissonance that I feel. It’s now been more than a third of my life, like. More than half the time i knew him. In the same period between his diagnosis and death there were other, more ordinary milestones. Finishing school, an 18th birthday, starting university. Starting to drink beers. The usuals. All alongside the milestones that a terminal illness brings. A a biopsy, a diagnosis, a prognosis, rounds of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. And then the lasts.

My memory of that time, and some of the years that followed, is quite patchy. Something of a coping mechanism? Like yeah, it happened. I recall some events. Not others. Much of it is a blur. Life carried on in a fairly ordinary way on the surface. University, exams, new routines. I remember waking up one Sunday at a friend’s house after one of those “parents are away” kind of care-free 17 year old pissups that you would have from time to time. I was told that Dad had a seizure. It felt random at the time. Huh, that’s a bit weird. Nothing to worry about, I assumed. I brushed it off. I brushed a lot of it off, if I’m honest. It took a while for the seriousness of it to really register.

I once read, probably on a Reddit thread, that grief is like a tsunami. It feels apt. At the beginning it is overwhelming, a series of enormous waves arriving one after the other. Over time, they become less frequent, less disruptive. Less prone to absolutely ruin your day. But they don’t quite stop. Something small, a passing remark about someone’s parents, a song, a place, can catch you off guard years later. Find yourself pausing, reflecting, sometimes unexpectedly emotional. Maybe someone plays a bitta Leonard Cohen or Van Morrison. Or some Elvis Costello, or even maybe I just walk past something that I think he would have something to comment on. Either way, it catches me off guard and I’ll later catch myself coming back to the same. Not because of anything anyone has done, but because of what is missing. It isn’t quite jealousy or envy. Just a quiet sense that you wish things had been different. I wonder what he’d think about me turning comments on Word docs for a living. He’d definitely be proud but it’s funny to think about.

There probably isn’t a “normal” amount of time for any of this. I hope not. I don’t think there’s much point in trying to reason or to bargain, or ask why. In this way i really don’t think the “stages of grief” that are so often bandied about are helpful - but I find comfort in accepting. To grieve, to be sad, to mourn, to reflect, to be happy, to not understand how you feel. It must surely be normal, human. Resilience takes a lot and I’m not sure how people (read: other members of family) do this when they have responsibilities that extend beyond turning up bleary-eyed at a university lecture. Life goes on, I guess.

I often think about what it would have been like to know my dad properly as an adult. I think we would have gotten on. He had a wicked sense of humour. A sharp tongue and the gift of the gab. There were some cracking jokes. He was well-read, and was always up for the craic. He was without judgment. I think. I’d like to talk to him about the world. About Ireland. About his life. My likes, my dislikes. Rugby. Generative AI and the immutable blockchain perhaps. Perhaps not. But it would be nice to celebrate milestones, achievements, failures, misses, wants and desires with him as well as everyone else. I passed my exams the other month. He’d have liked that. It would be nice to introduce him to friends, new and old.

What I remember most about him tends not to be the big things, but the smaller ones. Feelings, and emotions. When I was about twelve I locked him out of the house at 9pm on a Sunday evening in the middle of an Auckland winter. I remember being so mad at him. I can’t remember exactly why I did that or what my plan was. I have a vague sense that I had made my decision over him telling me to brush my teeth, when I was adamant that I had. I hadn’t actually brushed my teeth. My bedroom was right next to the front door. It would hardly take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who had locked the door.

Dad had a habit of quietly arranging things. Tickets to matches, sweet treats on the way home, usually with the explicit instruction not to tell Mum. That was part of the bargain. Ireland v Australia at the 2011 World Cup remains one of my fondest memories. I remember him handing me his credit card at about age twelve and telling me to go ahead and book the tickets. There was probably some element of plausible deniability there. There were Moro bars and fizzy drinks in the car back from the bach. Slightly off the books, definitely not arms length, but entirely appreciated.

Dad once arranged a small trophy and a whip around after myself and another racked up a big score in a cricket match. School wasn’t going to recognise it but he wasn’t going to let it go by unnoticed. It felt like a much bigger achievement than it probably was. I look back on these small memories. I felt, and I feel, special and grateful and loved. There was also the more practical side of things — the ferrying to and from sports games, the drives to the bach, the general sense that he was always available without making a point of it. Acts of service and all that.

I remember dad commuting to and from Christchurch and also Sydney for a time. He had an apartment rented in Paramatta. Mum and I went and visited and there were cobwebs on the kitchen utensils. Some life, dining out in Sydney. Every restauranteur within a kilometre radius would have known his name. Dad was a hard-worker. I don’t remember him complaining about much, if anything, ever. And he certainly had reason to.

He was my biggest supporter. I’d be told constantly that I was better at cricket than another member of my team being selected ahead of me. The topic of [redacted’s] playing ability was the feature of car-rides for the three or four years we shared an XI. I really wasn’t better than him, but he was stubborn and refused to hear me talk myself down (or have any modicum of realism). Sorry, but the statistics didn’t lie. George was always a better batsman and keeper (and to be honest, less annoying to be around).

I remember fairly early in his illness that Dad once reversed into my car. I wasn’t happy. It had been in the panel beaters the day prior for another dent. He wasn’t supposed to be driving at this point. I think it was only then that I really started to realise that this was kinda serious. If my father, the tireless driver, concierge and ardent supporter of all things Cormac was unable to get to cricket then it must have been more than just passing, more than just a wee illness.

My Sundays as a child followed a pretty exacting formula. Church in the morning, then on to Dymocks to pick up a book, and often a film afterwards. Sometimes the bowling alley. Church boring. Books fun. Movies fun. Bowling also fun, but it’s one of those activities that is a bit odd to be good at. I went bowling the other week with some work colleagues. Pleased to say that my bowling is now at a socially acceptable standard.

My Sundays otherwise instilled in me a love of reading, which remains. My dislike of sitting in pews on Sunday mornings also remains. Trips to Church on Sundays dropped off a cliff once I turned 16. That was the deal growing up. Respect dad and his sectarian wishes until I turned 16, and then I was free to do as I want. I think Dad’s relationship with the church brought him a great deal of comfort in that last half year or so. I dropped him off to St Benedict’s in Eden Terrace a fair few times, and would pick him up later that afternoon. He came to know a great deal of people through the church over the years, and was a great man for sticking around for 15 or 20 minutes, talking to whomever was about, when I’d rather be anywhere else.

When he was diagnosed, he told us all that he had good news and bad news. The great news was that it wasn’t hereditary. Some consolation for us. Mum and Dad had sat on the news for a day or two. Made arrangements. Presumably plans, took time to process to whatever extent you can in that amount of time. It still didn’t fully register for me, even after that I think. I don’t think it was until Christmas that year. I remember standing on the staircase, sometime after the end of the schooling year, complaining, crying about how this was the last Christmas dinner that we would have. My Dad listened. My mum listened. They comforted. Neither of them once complained about the hand dealt. He boxed on. Mum boxed on. Everyone just kept on keeping on, in spite of everything. I don’t feel bad for complaining, but I am lying if I say that there isn’t a small part of me that feels some kind of shame at that now, some time on.

I remember us later sitting down for drinks in the family living room, on a Sunday night perhaps. It would have been at some point in late March in 2016. Some time after St Patrick’s Day. He said that he would like to go to bed. I don’t remember him leaving his room from that point on.

My Dad made being a parent look easy. He was, above all, unjudgmental, compassionate and caring. He, from my perspective, put everyone else before him in every sense. It is something I value more now than I did then. I look at old photos of him. I look like him. Who’d have figured. Mum would say that I don’t even resemble her and that I’m the spit of him. I suspect I mirror a lot of his mannerisms.

I remember standing in St Patrick’s Cathedral, in Auckland, giving a eulogy. Conall and Mum wrote the eulogy. Champs. Standing at the lectern, more or less refusing to look up. I caught a few glances. There was a big crowd. So many of his friends, my friends, my mum’s friends came. The crowd was spilling out. I feel very proud of how I spoke that day, for the family, on all of our behalves. Proud of us all.

Ten years on, I still find myself thinking about him in small, unexpected moments. The waves still come from time to time. I heard Dance Me the End of Love in a café the other day. I was sat there with a book in the sun when it came on. I smiled. It was nice. A few years ago that would have ruined my day, but now I look back fondly. Reminisce. Moments like that remind me of him.

I think we would have got on very well now.

I love him.