Shine On, You Crazy Diamond

Pink Floyd, DIY, Thai espadrilles, Palm Pilots, guitars, fitted wardrobes, H&M buggy thieves, The Telegraph crossword and BBQ's. Memories of my Dad.

[Trigger warning: Please be aware that this essay contains words about death and grief. And lots of other stuff too including mung beans, Supertramp and Nick Knowles but also, death and grief].

My Dad died on Sunday 11 May, 2008. It was a super hot week, so hot that I was forced to go and buy sandals and a sleeveless blouse to cope with the unexpected heat. He’d been admitted to hospital on his 62nd birthday eight days prior and a few days later they moved him to a private room. ‘They’ve put me in a room with a view’, he told my Mum. We knew what this meant and so did he but instead, we exclaimed at how lucky he was to have so much space and how now, we could all come and visit him at the same time.

He was a DIY Dad, a Dad from a generation that could do it all and he did it with panache. He made MDF built in wardrobes in every bedroom of every home we ever lived in, complete with dressing tables; he installed bathrooms, moved water tanks, laid patios, built sheds, ripped out kitchens, fixed garage doors, painted rooms and fitted carpets. He also inflicted more injuries on himself than would be deemed standard - one time, he electrocuted himself by drilling through a socket line; another, I arrived home to find him driving off to A&E as he’d hit his thumb instead of the post when erecting a fence. His propensity to inflict harm on himself whilst engrossed in DIY activity made him the focus of many a family joke.

He’d worked for the Civil Service since he was 17 and as a result, was able to take one of the few benefits attributed to such an organisation which was early retirement. He was on holiday in Oman with my Mum and some friends when his fingers swelled. He was at the hospital in the midst of being diagnosed with pleurisy when, by chance, a consultant passed, glanced at the scans and noticed that there were anomalies on his lungs which, it transpired, were cancers. They advised that the cancer was inoperable and informed him that the only treatment possible was palliative.

He was a cool Dad. He played the guitar in a band during his school days and was still playing in the same band right up until he was diagnosed. His office walls were hung with guitars. He was madly passionate about music; he had a huge record collection which he labelled by number and my siblings and I were always woken on a Saturday morning to the sounds of Supertramp and Pink Floyd from the living room downstairs. He was an avid photographer and was always there for the next ‘big thing’ - he was the first person I knew (and possibly the last, ha) to get a Palm Pilot and was a technology obsessive. When we were kids, he had a permanently tanned arm from the open car window when driving to our summer holidays in France, where he’d lay for hours on the beach, prostrate in the sunshine until he was olive brown.

There was a builder, Colman, putting up shelves in my kitchen when my Mum called me to tell me what the consultant had said. The children were at school, Joe was at work and I felt as if I could hardly breathe for pain. It wasn’t in Colmans job description to cope with sobbing but he did his best. I think that I started grieving almost immediately. I’d wake up suddenly in the night in tears without knowing how or why they had started. I couldn’t rationalise the situation in my brain because my Dad no longer being here in the future wasn’t rational.

He was a tolerant Dad. He’d come and collect me from Bogarts in South Harrow when I was 16 and drunk at 2am on a school night, even when I made him park around the corner so that no one could see him. When I left home at 18 to live in Milton Keynes with a much older and wholly unsuitable man in a barely furnished house, he’d use his accommodation allowance to come and stay with me once a week and take me for dinner to make sure that I was okay (and gave me the allowance). Once, I found a huge spider in the bath, became hysterical and phoned him at work in Bedford. He got in his car and drove 45 minutes to come and dispose of it for me.

I threw myself wholeheartedly into trying to cure my Dad. I bought books about cancer ‘remedies’, found recipes for ‘cancer fighting’ meals. I went to Holland & Barrett and stocked my parents food cupboards with lentils, chia seeds and mung beans. I cooked them, which hugely confused my parents who didn’t even eat pasta. I read a book called 75 Practical Ideas For Family & Friends From Cancers Front Line. Nothing that I did stopped my Dads condition deteriorating.

He was a great Grandpa. He loved being a grandparent and would happily push the massive All Terrain double buggy around The Oracle Centre whilst my Mum and I perused the shops. He’d not notice when my children channelled Bonnie and Clyde and stuffed H&M hairbands and Hello Kitty merchandise into the sides of their seats, narrowly missing arrest. When we went to stay at their house in Somerset, he’d read book after book to them before they went to bed. We’d go on holiday with my parents to St Ives and he’d dig them massive holes to sit in on Portminster Beach.

When he was sick, I thought about him dying all the time. I used to drive from our home in Reading down to Somerset whilst Joe stayed at home with the kids. I couldn’t listen to music on the journey as every song would make me cry. I’d rehearse in my head for hours what I’d say at his funeral, how I’d tell people that he was gone. I was so furious; I wanted to have some sort of control over a situation that was wholly uncontrollable.

He was a Dad to go to for advice. In fact, even now Joe recounts how I would listen to his advice on a given subject and then take my fathers instead. When I was 18, I argued with my then boyfriend who told me to fuck off. I ran all the way home and told my Dad who told me, ‘never, ever, tolerate a man telling you to fuck off’. He was always on my side. When I tried to start my own business importing womens espadrilles from Thailand to sell on eBay (I know, I know), my Dad designed me a logo and headed paper so that I could set it all up properly. It was a stunning failure, but it wasn’t because of lack of encouragement.

My Mum, my brother, my sister and I were all sitting with him when he died. It was as if the life just left his body and that was it. Which is exactly what happened. One moment he was there and the next, he was gone. We shut his eyes. He didn’t even look like my Dad anymore. He didn’t look ‘at peace’ which is what you’re supposed to say. He didn’t look like he’d ‘gone to a better place’. He was just, gone. Death is not beautiful, it’s not a blessing, there’s no relief. It’s just sad.

He was a Dad who loved his family, who loved being with his family. He loved to BBQ for us all - his specialist subject was cooking steaks - and he liked nothing better than having us all together in one place, eating, drinking and having fun. He strove to give us as many life experiences as he could muster, moving us across the world to Hong Kong in the eighties, encouraging us to be independent so that we would grow up to want these same experiences for our own children. He was always there to help when any of his kids needed assistance or made mistakes (there were plenty of those), resolving things and making them better.

For months and months after my Dad died, I felt as if I had cotton wool fogging my brain. I couldn’t socialise with other people properly; I remember coming home from a dinner party with Joe and saying to him ‘am I ever going to enjoy doing anything ever again?’. This seems dramatic, in recollection, but I couldn’t associate my life going forward without him being there on the sidelines. Some years later, I went to counselling where the therapist explained to me the five stages of grief - denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance - and I realised that I had followed these to the letter without even realising it, the acceptance finally coming when I spoke about it with her.

He was a popular Dad. Due to my parents love of moving around and socialising, there were over 350 people at his funeral in Somerset, so many that the Church doors were left open and people were queued outside. The vicar had a slow drawl like Rowan Atkinson in Four Weddings which made my sister and I faintly hysterical. Lots of people said lots of lovely things about him and much about his kindness as a person. I stood up with my brother James and my sister Annabel and we read the eulogy to hundreds of people and I knew immediately that I wanted to have another child so that my children could feel the same support around them that I did. That, my friends, is known as bargaining in the five stages of grief. Remove one object of love, replace it with another.

Yesterday, my Dad would have been 79 years old. I think about him every day. I often think about what it would be like if he were to just walk back through the door; in my head, I can see him doing it right now. I see him in all the music that he loved, every time I listen to Pink Floyd or hear The Logical Song. I see him whenever I watch Joe begrudgingly attempting to use a drill and know that he would step in and do it for him. I see him when I watch someone doing The Telegraph crossword (he could do the cryptic one so fast it was almost genius). I see him when I hear Max learning how to play the guitar and think how happy he’d be about this. I see him, randomly, every time I see Nick Knowles on DIY SOS for whom he had an irrational dislike that we never really got to the bottom of.

He was a GREAT Dad. Our family has carried on without him; it’s grown, expanded and changed but the hole that is left by his absence is still incalculably huge. I wish that he was here to celebrate his birthday but mostly, I’m happy that for 37 years of my life, he was here with us being excellent. Happy Birthday to my Dad, John Kerman. And to quote his beloved Floyd, Shine On, You Crazy Diamond.

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