My father has only said these words to me once in my lifetime. I was in my late thirties, and I’d just stepped off stage after singing a song with his band at a jazz festival – having downed a whole glass of red wine (come on, those little festival plastic glasses don’t hold much) before stepping on stage because … this was my dad’s band … holy heck, help me.
Dad was always a stickler for quality in musicianship … and most things in life. A perfectionist, he had low tolerance for egotistical wankers (my words … he would have said “peasants”), so the weight of my projected expectations weighed heavily on me. Let’s just say the proximity of the nearest toilet didn’t feel close enough.
The experience, once I got started – as always was the case with my own band – was euphoric. Notes went where they were meant to, I remembered the lyrics, I didn’t stuff up. And afterwards, as we stood in the dirt field behind the biggest performance tent of the festival, musos scrambling their equipment in and out for the next set, Dad said quietly, “I’m proud of you.” To use a cliché, I can’t tell you how much my heart swelled.
A few weeks ago, my almost eighty-nine-year-old father was diagnosed with aggressive cancer. A shock for all our family. As he lives three and a half hours away from Melbourne, and most of our family are interstate or hours away from him, the logistics of caring for his psychological, medical and physical needs have been taxing for us all in different ways.
But recently, in a poignant moment of realisation, all this stress temporarily paled for me. As my father and I sat in one of Wycheproof’s hotels – the Royal Mail is Dad’s favourite – and I waited for him to finish his fish and mashed potatoes at a snail’s pace (note: my ADHD makes it feel like a snail-on-heavy sedatives-pace, bless him), one of his friends – a genuine stalwart of the town – leant towards me and said, “You know your dad is so proud of you. He talks about you all the time.”
Holy shit. Here come the tears as I write this. My inner child is wailing within – I don’t know with what. Gratitude? Relief? Love? Whatever it is, it feels selfish that I wanted, needed to hear that, when it’s me who should be lavishing all the love and care on him.
And it occurs to me, when have I ever told my dad that I’m proud of him? Sure, I’ve praised his loyalty to his three wives (that’s another story), his music, his artwork (besides his career as a consummate trumpet player, he was a phenomenal pen and ink and watercolour artist – all sadly gone by the wayside in his later years), but I don’t think I have ever told him I’m proud of him. I mean, he’s a dad, and it’s in his job description to love, support and praise his kids, not the other way around, right?
But now, I’m wondering how must that feel for him? To never be told.
I’m a big hugger – ask my not-so-huggy, ever-patient husband. But in my youth, Dad was never a hugger. A quietly spoken English gentleman, he kept his proper distance, and the most us kids could expect was a cheeky smile and a wriggle of the nose across the dinner table, especially when Mum was telling us off for some minor misdemeanour. No, physically affectionate he was not. Until his second wife died of cancer.
As Dad and I sat next to each other in the dim grey of my step-mother’s palliative care room, her carefully washed body cooling in white sheets, Dad seemed a sunken man. Eyes closed, he sat in silent misery. I didn’t know how to ease his pain, but I did know that a hug always eased mine, so I leant across, hugged him tight and I told him he was the best thing to ever happen to Mum. He broke down. We both did.
But this sad moment triggered something wonderful. That physical connection broke down an invisible barrier between us. Dad now accepts and returns hugs easily, or at least gives a genuine squeeze of a hand, which is enough. And we freely say “I love you” to each other.
I know what I’m going to do on my next visit. He’ll be over covid by then, so I can give him the biggest and gentlest – he’s fragile – hug, and tell him how proud I am of him.
I bet he’s going to cry too.