Letters 2021
Letter 68
08-01-2021 (lockdown at home)
Dear D,
The country is in lockdown again. Just when we thought things could not get any worse, they do. I am now used to not being able to travel abroad to visit family, to living alone with virtually no visitors for the last nine months. I wear a face mask when I have to go into the town centre or do my weekly shop. Like everybody else at present, I have a number of face masks, half a dozen of the blue ones, I never bother with and two white washable ones. Mind you, I haven’t washed the washable ones yet! What a nuisance it is to wear the mask anyway; who would have thought we would actually carry at least one around with us at all times? Recent regulations closed down tennis clubs, which reduces my face-to-face socialising by maybe 75%. I go for a walk in the park instead where most people do not meet eyes and smiles are rare! I sometimes wish I had a dog, but living in a first-floor flat, that is virtually impossible. Walking in the park with a dog would be a big improvement in helping to make contact. Do you remember our dog? You were six years old when she died. I’m sure you loved her during those formative years of your young life. You helped me to bury her when she had to be put down. I remember that day vividly as it was very painful watching the vet administer the injection to my poor dog, looking at me almost accusingly. I took her home in a plastic bag and brought her to the back of the garden where I’d dug a hole. You were waiting for me as I let the dog out of the bag gently on the ground. You went over to look at her closely and wondered how come her eyes were still open. You were always a keen observer of detail; I’m sure you still are. We placed her in the base of the hole, deep enough to ensure the foxes wouldn’t try and expose her and stood reverently around after filling in the hole. Later you made her image an icon on my pc. I still have that image, to see when I log on to my pc. I somehow doubt you have had a dog at home since, but if I were to wager a bet, I’d imagine you will have one in the future sometime. How did I get on to talk about dogs? It’s typical of my conversations with you, I never know where they will lead.
Christmas was so unusual this year. There was no anticipation, no atmosphere, no gathering of friends and family or presents, even the music was missing, no Christmas carols. I have to admit I did send you a Christmas card. My instinct was not to bother, but on Christmas Eve, I had one left over. I was going to put it aside for next year, as if that would happen, and something possessed me think about you. The last time I sent you a card recently was when I was told you were at university. I sent it to the department of the university, asking them to pass it on to you. A few days later I received a dispassionate response from the department secretary enclosing the card, saying they couldn’t pass it on to you as it would go against your rights to privacy. Now, I looked at the card, which had the word ‘hope’ written on it and decided to send it to my youngest daughter, a Christmas card in hope? I wondered what would happen to it. Would it meet the fate of all the other cards I sent you over the years? But there was no harm in trying to make contact with you in such an non-intrusive way. Previously I never signed my name on your cards, but this time I did sign it ‘dad’. In my best scenario I imagined you opening it, reading the message and reflecting on that. My pessimistic view was that it would never reach you, or even if it did get to your hands, you would destroy it. I can’t say I dwelled on those thoughts, rather, as always previously, put them behind me, with just a trace of a lingering hope. Now that Christmas is over, whatever it was that passed for that beautiful event that was highjacked by the coronavirus, is replaced by a sense of confusion and anxiety for the coming year. Today one thousand three hundred people died of Covid-19 in this country, more than any day previously in the pandemic, so the portents are not good. Reality is challenging the message that ‘this too will pass’. Although I am ever optimistic.
I sincerely hope you were able to share Christmas time with friends and family to exchange presents and good cheer. And that you can embrace that word ‘hope’ for your future, written on that card.
With all my love for now,
Dad xxx
Letter 69
28-04-2021 (still in lockdown at home, with hope on the horizon of some form of release)
Dear D,
A month ago, they had the one-year anniversary of lockdown in the UK to formally announce the arrival of Covid-19, although it sneaked unannounced into the country weeks before that. It took the government a good while to take any kind of action. Ever since it has taken over our lives. They are talking about a roadmap back to normality now, but I get the feeling it will go on affecting our lives for a lot longer and might even alter some of our behaviours for the indefinite future. Our lives have been thrown off balance in subtle ways, shaping us, as we get used to living this way. All the signposts we rely on without awareness, have been knocked over and we negotiate through an unfamiliar life where days are jumbled together. Looking back over, for example, the last week, it is virtually impossible to define memorable events in any one day. I’d love to know how you are managing to negotiate your way through this.
A week ago, I did have a memorable experience, although I just had to check the actual day on my diary. The husband of a friend of mine died eighteen months ago. He had been bedbound for six years and it was almost a relief when he passed. At the get together after the funeral, I met a lady who said she was his eldest daughter. We had married at about the same time and I remembered that my friend was his second wife and that he had had two children from his first wife. But they were never mentioned whenever our new families got together, as the children of both families grew up, became and remained friends. Those two children were to all intents and purposes written out of our understanding of their history. As this lady was telling me her story in brief, I didn’t want to ask intrusive questions about her life, as she had just witnessed the cremation of her father. It took me until just recently to summon up courage to ask my friend if she could make contact with this daughter. I emailed her explaining how I had been separated from you twelve years ago and without any expectation wondered if we could talk together about our experiences. She responded, to suggest we communicate by Zoom. I was a bit apprehensive about intruding into her life, but we had agreed to relate experiences without questions or judgement. She was eight years old the last time she had seen him; from an upstairs window where she lived. He came to the front door holding the hand of his new two-year-old daughter. Her mother answered the door to tell him, his children no longer wanted to see him. He turned and left. She described the understanding that she and her brother had of their father, that he was no good and contact with him was undesirable. She could not describe the way she had come to this belief, other than it must have been a borrowed understanding of his character, as she had no memory of any reason, she would have had to perpetuate that feeling of distrust and dislike. She had a supportive step father through to her teenage years, when her mother separated from him. It was at this point she said when she dislodged her mother from the ‘pedestal’ she had held her on because of her, what she felt were self-centred views on life. She then made efforts to locate her father, but was unsuccessful, with her loyalties to her mother predominating. In her twenties she made more efforts, again without her mother’s knowledge, but with greater effort. She went to the house she knew his mother lived in, but she was no longer there and neighbours didn’t know where she had moved to. She went on to get married and have her own children and the memory of her father took a backward step. Later she tried again a number of times, but always drew a blank on internet searches. Without going into any detail, she told me she went through eight years of psychotherapy during this period, without unlocking feelings for her father. Loyalty to her mother was a big part of the reason she didn’t persevere with her search. Until one morning with unexpected firm intent, she trawled the internet and hit upon his name and that of his second wife and daughter. She wrote to him. This was forty-eight years after the last time she had seen him walking away with the young girl. She was afraid to upset her mother about this contact but finally met him a week later. He was bed-bound and died eighteen months later. His wife told me he had cried when he opened the letter. It was only then that pleasant memories surfaced of her father and visits to theatres, galleries, plane trips, holidays and other memorable experiences.
I wonder what this tale tells me about you. Does it explain your change of feelings towards me, which have dominated at the expense of those tender loving feelings when you were younger. That those feelings can be released is the subject of a prayer I make every day.
With all my love for now,
Dad xxx
Letter 70
20-08-2021 (Covid-9 still in evidence)
Dear D,
I haven’t written for four months, which is too long. I meant to try and write monthly, but the months just roll by, out of control. There is no real definition to the time as it goes by, no really significant event and no concrete path for the future. It’s twenty months since I had a holiday. Life is almost on hold; each day is like the last and the next. But it does have an appeal, in that we live in the present, not longing for future plans to unfold, which I suppose must be better for our health. I’ve given up alcohol; well, I haven’t given it up, I’ve just stopped drinking alcohol. I can see a case of six bottles of my favourite wine a friend gave me and I have no inclination to want to open even one bottle. Having a drink is associated with celebrating or something special to enjoy; a few glasses with a nice meal in nice company. Is it that there is nothing to celebrate? I don’t really understand what my reasons are for not drinking, but it is probably more to do with my not wanting to lose control, to use the drink as a crutch to raise my spirits, when I know it won’t. I am spending 99% of my time when at home being by myself and I want to keep my wits about me. Very strange, I don’t know what brought that on! It’s not something I would expect to share with you in normal circumstances, but it is not normal. You are not here with me, of course, and you are not in any way accessible to me. You will not be thinking of me at present, you have many other things to maintain your interest. So, this letter is winging its way into the ether just describing my current mental condition. I shouldn’t, but I imagine the time will come when you will be interested. You reside in a place in my thoughts you will never leave. Only I know that, but I want you to know that as well, even if it is far into the future, that I have been thinking of you and say a prayer for you at least every day. You can only exist in my mind. The world has accepted your free choice to keep your distance from me. I can’t share my thoughts with anyone else. It’s almost bizarre how the reality of our separation is accepted as the way it is and should be. I did manage to have a discussion with your half sister a few months ago about my will and thoughts about you. It’s not a contentious issue for her as to how I might have written my will, that is of no concern for her as she knows I will make sensible provision. But I did struggle to get her to focus on my concern about you, almost as if you had ceased to exist. At least that was what I thought initially. And then it became apparent that thoughts of you were painful for her. She associated you with a painful period in my life, which she wanted to banish from memory, to allow new memories to take the place of those hurtful ones. She didn’t want to talk about my will, ignoring the fact that I will die sometime in the future. I am not old, she said. But that was not what I wanted to talk about; I was thinking about you and the fact that I had removed you from my will. And I had a large sum of money I had saved for your university education, which I should have passed on to you a couple of years ago when you finished university. Although I don’t know if you have finished university. It was just that the issue played on my mind. In a calm and collected way she gave her opinion. “Just hand over the money for her university education, you have no reason to hang on to it and she will probably have need of it. Your will in not a snapshot of your feelings now. Think of the longer view, way into the future. Wouldn’t you imagine that you would have been expected to make provision for your youngest daughter in the same way you treated your other four children?” They are the wise words of the eldest daughter to the father, swopping roles. In that instant it became clear what to do. The problem I had been struggling with for years was given the solution I should have been able to see for myself. When I returned home from my visit, I arranged to see my solicitor. I amended my will to share all my estate equally between my five children as it was before. I handed over a Building Society cheque for your university money with an instruction that it be only paid to you. I know I have done the right thing.
With all my love for now,
Dad xxx