A Tale of Two Speeches

I peer into the mirror, no trace of your face returning my searching look. There never was, and I know that won’t change now. Your legs, however, hold me up, your feet, your toes, your….actually you laid this floor, didn’t you? On your hand and knees, refusing to wear a mask, working late even when I grew fed up and impatient to stop the clatter and rest, knowing that tomorrow I wouldn’t thank you all that much, but that I would walk every day on this floor you laid and not even notice how thankful I should be. I look down. Black socked feet against the now tired laminate. There is a gap, where the door frame curves and the square cut edge does not meet its bending. It’s filled with a built up cloying grime I can’t seem to keep at bay.

In my hand, a limp paper rustles against my thigh. You wouldn’t have done this for me. I pick at the small wound you opened when you said you never wanted me to get married, in case you were expected to make a speech. I wouldn’t have. But that’s irrelevant. Right then. One more time, get through it without choking up.

“I have a photograph of you, at the bottom of a slide, with a grin of utter unadulterated joy on your face. Not immediately visible between your outstretched arms, my tiny daughter, in purple polka dots, not yet one. You were always doing that, taking her out of my arms to show her the world you wanted to her to see. I was so tired from nappies and night feeds and the drudgery of twenty five rounds of peekaboo that I never fought you on it. You never did any of that. I wanted to show her the world. The drudgery was the price and you never paid your way. Once, you told me that women were better at that stuff, didn’t get bored by it. Well I was bored. I was bored and depressed, and there wasn’t room for that either, was there? Not next to your towering depression. Your delicate thin skin you told everyone was tough as leather. There never was. We tiptoed around you as children, scared to prickle your pride. These days maybe we would say trigger. Scared to trigger you. Maybe that comes with more understanding. But we were four, five, six, seven, and on, every age. It wasn’t our job to understand you. It wasn’t our job to protect you. It wasn’t our job to have to justify, to reassure, to prove our love to you. You hurt us, every time you called into question how much we cared. We were not your mother or your father.

We were scared of you. The edge of danger in every raucous game, flying so close to the precipice, waiting for the nudging breeze that would dash us against the rocks. And we were scared to lose you. Children don’t understand bluff. “Say goodbye, I’m leaving” means that we should say goodbye, you’re leaving. And then you were back, again and again, and we were only mostly relieved because you still glowered like a wounded panther, our mother’s forced jollity flowering over your fetid lair. She always took up your cause. Not because you were right. Because she was scared not too. She told me once, when I tried to explain how abandoned I had felt, standing alone with my righteousness, still the smallest voice in the room. She told me that she was more afraid of the consequences of standing against you, of aiding and abetting your adverse child, than she was of the consequences of letting us see that the world will give no quarter to right or reason. Not in the face of a more powerful man. And you were always right, weren’t you. You never even noticed that your opinion was not the same thing as fact.

I’m bigger now. I didn’t notice how big until the word menopause came out of your mouth and you were talking about me. Had you kept track all along? Because I have still been tiptoeing around the toys you have thrown out of your pram. I have still been biting my tongue, my tongue that I know can pull that trigger with a flicker if the light is right. I have still been trying not to disappoint you. I have still been wanting you to approve. And all this time, I have been an adult child. And now? Does that stop now?”

A car pulls up to the kerb, black, foreboding. Secretive. When I climb out, perhaps I will be forever changed. I pick up a small rucksack that doesn’t go with my outfit at all. You were so derisive about handbags. About any trappings of femininity. I could take a handbag instead. You would never know. I shoulder the bag and shut the door behind me.

At the other end, the service is perfunctory. I wonder why I thought this was something you would have wanted. Maybe it was something I wanted. I can say this to you now and maybe it will be the final word. I unfold the paper on the lectern. Right then. One more time, get through it without choking up.

“I have a photograph of you, at the bottom of a slide, with a grin of utter unadulterated joy on your face. Not immediately visible between your outstretched arms, my tiny daughter, in purple polka dots, not yet one. When I found that photograph, years after it was taken, I didn’t see her there, held safely, cushioned, protected, even as she plummeted to earth. I knew to look for her though, because I have seen that face a thousand times. It’s the face you wore as you adored my babies. It’s also the face I looked up and saw when I was small. It was the face that taught me that the world is full of adventure, and that I could safely take them all, that you would always cushion me if I was to fall. I grew up with the greatest gift any child could have. From my first helpless moments in this world, the world grinned in delight at my being.

Of course, that grin became wrinklier as time passed, but your sense of fun didn’t sag. To watch you be a grandfather to my children has been a visceral remembering of so much – the feel of the metal rim of the wheelbarrow under my white knuckle grip as we cornered too fast, screaming with laughter as you tipped us almost out. The solid strength of your large, warm hands on my forearms as I flew round and circles, the wind whipping my face and my toes dipping in and out of the sea, spinning in orbit around your turning body. Those hands, large, warm, safe hands, holding me aloft so I could see further. Holding them aloft so they could see further. I remember leaving them with you overnight for the first time, and thinking that I did not need to tell you not to let them climb on the roof. Surely you had matured since I clambered bare bottomed and unafraid over the tiles while our poor mother looked away with her heart in her mouth? When I came back the next morning, there was the ladder, against the gutter, and there were my children, all smiles, with a plate of snacks up on shingle. You always knew how to make things fun.

Daddy, you have given us so much. You taught me that fun is worth the effort. That adventure is round every corner. You taught me to wallow in stories, to question doctrines and to interrogate everything – including myself. You taught me that to love, and to be loved, underpins all. I don’t quite know how we are going to carry on without you here, but I do know that those large, warm hands will always be at my back. And that your voice will always be right there with me. Need it or not! Daddy, I love you. And that will never go away.”