I've been thinking a lot about my dad recently. It troubles me that I don't miss him, even though I was at his bedside when he died in my home almost a decade ago. I think it's normal for sons to miss their fathers - or am just an idealist? I've told myself a story about my dad and my relationship to him that I am now being forced to think through again....
My dad was a rugby player, he loved cricket. He went to racing - horses and cars. He was a bloke's bloke. At 16 he ran away from home in Stanger South Africa and joied the military. Not long after he was fighting the Nazis in Italy and North Africa. It was clear to me that he loved male company, felt at home in it and knew the secrets of camaraderie. As a little boy, I couldn't access this world. It felt hard. It smelt strange. I didn't understand its language, gestures, and codes. I felt different.
I don't remember my father ever talking about his home or his childhood. Once he mentioned his time in a Catholic boarding school. He did well academically and in sport, but then left school to join the war effort...
I'm in a psychodrama session, and I'm the protagonist - the focus is on me and the issues I want to work on. I talk about my father and my mother, and the director - a therapist - says "let's meet your father". So as you do in psychodrama, I chose someone from the group to play the role of my father. The individual I chose to be my dad knows nothing about my father. "Be your father" the director says to me - "we need to meet your dad". "Hello, what's your name?" she asks me. "I'm Bob" I respond. "Hi Bob" and so it goes until the person in the role can take on something of his persona. We role reverse to get more information. "So tell us about your son Michael" the director then asks me. And so the drama progresses until more is known about my father any my relationship with him. Then the work takes a turn I didn't expect. "Do you have any other children Bob?". "Well yes I do. My first born died in infancy..." This was my elder brother we never spoke about in our family.
The drama progresses and through it I recall the only anecdote I have about my brother. My dad is in a taxi, in what was then Northern Rhodesia (Africa) driving to the cemetery. At his side is his best friend George. Both men have heavy hearts. In my drama, I can feel my father's heaviness, his broken heart, and the weight of his hurting wife still in hospital aching for the child who had lived only one week. She is pained that she cannot be with her husband and the tiny casket. The enactment finishes with him putting the tiny body into the cold African earth and this young man leaving part of his own life with that tiny baby. His son. His only son.
It’s a long story, but my learning was this: The story I had told myself - that my father didn't spend time with me because I was no good at sport and because I had no feel for the man’s world he had found himself being nourished in, was probably inaccurate. I began to see the guilt a midwife (my mother) would carry when she loses her son. I sensed the deep investment my father had for his son and for the tender vulnerability that contrasted the war that had ravished the world and my father's young life. And I could see for the first time that my father's absence in my life wasn't because of who I was, or wasn't, or what I could do or couldn't manage to do. It was because of where he was in his life, at that time.
A few months after my brother's death, my mother was pregnant again - determined to save her next child. I was born premature (a portend of my impatience according to my wife). I can't be sure of this, but I suspect my mother's investment in me her replacement child was so great, and my father's sense of loss yet unresolved, that he had no option but to surrender me to my mother's needs. My dad just wasn't there because he couldn't be. I'm beginning to see that actually he made many attempts to get to know me...
Only six months ago my wife and I went to see my mother who lives in the South of England. I asked about my brother... "You said his name was John, right?" I'd long suspected there was something of a mystery about his name. There was a pause... "I didn't want to tell you - I thought it would hurt you....” I knew what was coming. "His name was Michael, Michael Robert the same name as you have". And then I knew that my role in the family had been as a replacement child. I certainly had been loved, and wanted but...
I'm beginning to see my Dad's place in all of this and the liberating thing is now I know that my Dad's response to me was nothing really to do with me. It was where he was, where he was with my mother, where my mother was etc. For some reason this has helped me to recognise that some of my low self-esteem issues can be traced to these early dynamics. Most of all it has taught me that it’s not true to say that my father didn't love me. For the first time I could have empathy for him. And I feel at peace with my dad. Its okay I understand. I'm not sure you had much of a home. Thanks for all you did give me.
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