Lost Conversations

and things I would have said

Photos © Julie Farrell

I think of you all of the time

Now that you’re gone

I want so badly to talk to you, Dad.

To wish you a happy sixty-ninth birthday, give you a giant bear-hug and some obscure music or space-related gift, instead of clinking our solemn beers over our plates amidst the chatter of the Real Greek restaurant where no one knows you should be here.

I want to tell you I’m building a playlist, brand-new, stuff I haven’t heard before, just for you, like you did so many times for us.

I’m sorry it took me so long.

I want to hear the melody of you again.

It’s a paltry offering, this piecemeal playlist, but it’s the closest magic I can forge to what it felt like to sit and just talk with you. To hear the way you say ‘Mh-hm’, drawing out the deep vowel-sound, whilst you run a thoughtful thumb over your moustache. The way you’d lean back, eyes wide when something I said surprised you. Or you’d lean forward, rub your hands, elbows perched on your knees if you were listening close and concerned.

Songs were your conversations, weren’t they? I can’t believe how much more that makes sense to me now you’re gone. I wonder if everyone has the revelations I have after they lose someone they love. How can you make more sense to me now than you did before? Does death invite us somehow to be a detective around all those never-had conversations?

I suppose it makes sense. It was the biggest fucking shock in the world when you ceased existing. I thought I’d been preparing mentally, but that was bullshit. I’d been kidding myself on. Tugging a cocoon over my worry and doubt, my fear that you’d leave me stranded here on Earth, too soon. (*Latest on the infinite-multiverse, by the way – it’s increasingly likely, and we ARE the only sentient specks of dust in it all. But maybe you’re partying with aliens and proving us all wrong (you’d love that).

You left, in the way you did; still beating and staring and warm, and I guess maybe there was some messed-up grace in us being the ones to pull that final plug in a too-bright room which didn’t smell of you, or have your nick-nacks, or your Harris machair photo or the painting I did of the electric guitar with the neon-pink lead under the night sky.

I held on to your hand – did you feel that?  I didn’t let go. Ran my thumb over your wedding ring, your soft skin, again and again as we said goodbye. As they removed your breathing tube and your beautiful rhythm slowed and slowed. Did you hear me saying thank you, Dad? For everything?

I meant it.

On your birthday, I went down to the water.

Pressed play on your voice for the first time since you left, and it didn’t break me. It wrapped me in warmth and made me smile. Felt like you were right here next to me; telling me about your Cadet days, and how you shimmied up narrow rope ladders that ascended the hull of giant oil tankers, not a care in the world about the ninety-foot plummet to certain death below. How is this my Dad? How is this you? I shake my head at the sheer madness of it.

I also came here to tell you that we got a house.

Finally.

It’s only taken us three years, I know. I can see the wide smile crossing your cheeks and hear your Oh! Tremendous! And feel your hugs and congratulations.

I’ve barely been able to speak it aloud, it’s felt so unreal. You were the first person we wanted to tell. I bet you wouldn’t be surprised to hear it’s very similar to the one I grew up in, the one we loved for eighteen years, the one we lost when you had your breakdown. It surprised me.

I’ve had to pick up a lot of broken glass (and sustained a few injuries in the clean-up) in the fifteen years since we lost our home. It’s really only been this year that I’ve fully made peace with it, understood they why of it… the things you’ve carried for so long. I know I directed a lot of my anger and confusion at you, and I’m sorry. I couldn’t understand how you’d lost your way so much, it took me too long to understand how out at sea you truly were. I’m so glad we got those last two years though, when you moved here.

Wherever we go      

Wherever we bide                                    

Whatever the wind and weather                         

Wherever we go     

Wherever we bide                              

We’ll travel these waves together

When the storm has blown away 

 And the night is as still as your sleeping  

 I’ll pluck out the skelf of the moon from the sky 

 And I’ll give it to you for safekeeping

I saw Karine play this song live, by the way, five months after you left, and this did break me. Utterly. ( *I thought she sang ‘We’ll travel these waves together’, until now). It was in a public setting with my peers, where there was no escape. So I hung my head and gave in to the sting of you missing this, tears and snot decorating my shoes, entirely undone when I had been telling myself I was okay. *I’ll never be okay with you being gone.

When we walked through the front door of this house, we felt immediately at home. The lovely owner showed us around, room after room unpeeling before us, and it felt like some parallel universe was dropping missing pieces on our path. She reminded me of you. Calm, observant, charming – steadying.

It’s got a garden, too. A secret word I’ve been testing the shape of as I whisper it into the wind on my walks.

It wraps around the house on three sides, and has the room we’ve been craving to set roots and grow. You’d be cracking jokes about all the lawn-mowing, but I have grand plans for veg growing, wildflower beds and places to relax and unwind.

Blueberry.

Bramble.

Raspberry.

Marigold.

Cornflower.

Dog-rose.

Every utterance is a spell cast, surely.

It’s closer to the water, the harbour and the bridges. Close to the spot you loved, where the boats sway and slosh, clink-clinking in a steady rhythm. The place that pulled you back to memories of happier days at sea.

Before, before.

Where will you go my darling daughter?
   I'm gonna live down by the water

Water heal my body
Water heal my soul
When I go down, down
To the water
By the water I feel whole

We hope this home will grow with us, in whatever way suits. A gathering place, for friends, for sure. A place to discover the next chapters of ourselves as a team and as individuals. The instruments are going to be in the heart of our home, in an open space that flows and connects through the house, and we’re going to be playing all the time, and we hope our friends will join us, too. There’s nothing quite like sharing music with friends, is there Dad? (Did you know we go along to your Jolly Boys drinks, now? Such a joy to hear stories about you from your boyhood friends, and to talk about life and music in your honour.)

Music is going to flow out of our windows and doors, just like it did in our home, because you made sure of it.

I think I’m trying to say thanks, Dad.

For the music.

But for it all, really.

Eastern sun

Melt the cold from my bones
Curtain rise

Take the darkness from my eyes
Breathing in

Pulling life into my lungs
As a child

I am born again