Dad

I’ve often debated about what to share and what not to on here.

My professional conscience has mostly abstained from too many personal outbursts but my artistic self wears her heart on her sleeve and this blog is, after all, a merging of the two.

For years I have called this journal my ‘house of cards’. 
Sometimes the wind blows a little stronger and I find myself running after my scattered walls, my queen of hearts sitting in the mud as I begin rebuilding again.

Also, the clouds are going to dump one month’s worth of rain on us today. 
As if that wasn’t a sign.

'When Mum asked me to write a eulogy for Dads funeral once it became clear he was on his way out, I couldn’t put pen to paper.

The man in the bed before me looked nothing like my father, but a much older, tired and worn stranger with sunken eyes and for the life of me I didn’t know what to say about him.

But when he finally left us and the madness of his torture was over, the tears finally fell and the memories started flooding back, like little specks of light, dancing around me, bright fireflies coming from behind the trees.

I pluck them out of the sky, randomly, one by one and share them with you.

Dad helped me build a frog pond one summer and we found oodles of jelly eggs and, as he explained their development every step of the way, we watched them turn into tadpoles together and eventually hop away, only to return every year for a long time to lay their eggs in our back yard.

He was compassionate with humans and animals alike, but never over-emotional. That was left to Mum and I.

One of my favourite stories is about the penguin he found covered in oil on a beach which he wrapped in his best jacket. He took it home, cleaned it up and released it back to a clean beach. The jacket of course was ruined.

He always had a clear mind when it came to right and wrong and what was fair and just.

Dad taught me that slow and steady wins the race.

He was a fantastic nurse.

Once I tried to put a bandaid on his finger which he’d badly cut and promptly fainted on the floor from the sight of all the blood, leaving him, finger still bleeding like mad, having to tend to me with cool washcloths.

He also brought down many of my fevers with vinegar socks and tended to my many scraped knees and elbows with his immaculately kept leather bound first aid kit.

One of his favourite memories, he often told me, was when I flew back from Australia to Switzerland at 4 years of age with Mum and ran towards the glass door separating us from him at the airport, a single tear trickling down my cheek. I don’t remember this at all, but I’m glad he kept it in his heart.

Dad could get the best tan just by working in the garden for a few hours. Mum would always be envious of this.

Everything he tried his hand at he ended up mastering to perfection. From becoming an incredible chef and teaching me the joys of food, feeding me with garlic snails and bouillabaise before I could even read and write, to building things for the house and taking long distance drawing lessons. Each lecture book carefully filed away after the exercises had been finished and his artworks sent off to be marked.

Later in life, he and I would spend a few afternoons painting in the garage. I would tell him about my relationship problems and he would teach me meticulously how to layer oil paints. His brushes were always cleaned and put away pristinely. Mine were bent, sticky and unruly. As much as he tried, his careful and neat ways never rubbed off on me.

Dad was one of the hardest workers I’ve known. Always dedicated, on time, thorough, respectful and committed, he was a prized asset to every employer.

He never treated me like a child but rather like a little lady. He would invite me along to the galleries in Zurich, the opera when Mum didn’t want to go and cheese tastings with his boss, giving me a passion for the finer things in life long before I truly understood them.

He was incredibly intelligent. Quite often if I was passionate about a subject and had done my research on it, on bringing it up with him, I was always baffled that he had already read up about it and could give me a whole new set of views and angles I hadn’t considered. He was never boastful of this, but to this day I am still in awe of the breadth of knowledge he kept inside, of which I may never even have touched upon more than the tip of the iceberg.

The household he grew up in, nestled in a valley, was a crazy and colourful one. His parents, who owned a shop downstairs from the main part of the house and who most of the town people turned to in times of need, were some of the most generous people to have lived. He had many siblings and other people’s children came and went, all participating in the many stories that would surround his childhood. But as with a lot of large catholic families, especially those from a fairly conservative Swtizerland at the time, there were emotional barriers that were instilled and a need for independence from an early age. This formed my Dad into an incredibly able, polite, proper, private and proud man, though often a little distant, which could make it difficult for the people that loved him to reach out to him and harder to know more about the amazon - sized soul within him.

I’m incredibly sad to let him go so early in his life, knowing of the plans he had for the future years and just so few weeks shy of meeting his first grandchild.

I hope our new family member inherits some of his incredibly good looks and honourable qualities so that I may not have to miss him quite so much.

I love you Daddy.’