A meditation on the passing of my father.

Dewy beads of condensation tracked maps across the tips of my fingers as I shifted the grip on a glass of whisky and thought about the ocean of time that was now between us. A pandemic had rendered our ability to gather en masse void so, sticking to the under twenty rule, I was surrounded by my nearest and dearest who were all nursing glasses of their own.

I was remembering the milky, far off look in my dad’s eyes as he grappled with the features of my face and tried to assemble them into a person he knew. My hand low on his knee, not high like his tended to be, so high I’d have to remind him that I wasn’t mum. He was like that, demonstrative with his hands but rarely his words. His hands “like dinner plates”. People had a tendency to exaggerate the details of my father, but the way people talked about his hands was always with a reverence that made me feel inadequate. Our house was dotted with the evidence of his handiwork in each corner, a coffee table or a bookcase, whereas I’d always ignored his invitations to his shed, something I reprimand myself for regularly now that I’m grown. Over the years his projects decreased in quantity and increased in irregularities, at first laughing off the odd craftsmanship as being quirky, but later realising that you could trace the path of his worsening dementia in the wooden artefacts that adorn the halls.

When I was six he gave me a pocket knife and a small block of wood, I realise now this was his way of relaying a larger narrative, of discussing something primal and essential. I immediately tested its edge against my thumb and remember the thin trail of blood that followed me as I went to show him the mistake I’d made. Never one to admonish an exploratory nature he handed the knife back and chuckled, simply saying “you won’t do that again!”.

Now, as a bead of sweat ran from the icy glass in my hand and over the faded scar on the edge of my thumb, I struggled to find the words to eulogise a man who had watched himself reduced to mythology as his body failed him.

I placed my drink on the coffee table at my knees, the knots in the wood warping through the glass and appearing like ghostly eyes. I shifted the glass so that the flaws in the timber became kind and cleared my throat as I stood to say goodbye.