“H”
The room was a brilliant white and he just sat silently opposite me. He looked exactly as I remembered him and he was calmer than I’d ever seen him. As the thousands of words that I wanted to say raced through my mind, I struggled to begin – where could I begin?
“Do you remember?”
I kept saying those words over and over, and every time there was a different ending to the sentence, and every time he nodded. And with every nod I could see in his face that he was back in that place – there was a glint in his eye, and occasionally a huge smile would spread across his wrinkled face.
I told him I knew he’d been looking after me. Looking out for me and guiding me. I’d grown a lot in the time since… I know who I am, what I want, where I’m heading.
The day of the funeral had been one of the saddest days of my life, and as I realise now, one of the proudest. Seeing the Union flag draped across his coffin made my chest burst, and I was so proud to have been a part of that life. So proud.
“You helped me. You taught me. Sometimes I never believed you. You always did the right thing, and at one time I thought that was wrong. I thought other people got ahead by doing the wrong thing, and I was getting left behind, and I resented it. But you were right, and I realise that now.”
As a child, it was my dread that he’d go. He was old then, but he was always around. He was around for my first days at school, my first car, my first house, my wedding day, my first daughter. Some day I’ll bring myself to look at the pictures of him and my daughter. She’ll never remember him of course, but she’ll know all about him.
“I hope you are proud. Proud of my past, present and whatever I do in the future. I’ll never fight a war, and I’ll never see the things you saw, and I know you are thankful for that. You never glorified war.”
The last few times I saw him I always made sure that I said goodbye properly. He was very old then, and the signs were there.
I shook his hand. His hands were rough.
“Goodbye H,” I said as I looked into his failing eyes. As I walked out of the room I turned around one last time and looked at him.
“Goodbye H and thankyou”
In memory of
Henry Charles Dodd 1910-2005
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