Single Parenthood & I: ...Until We Meet Again, Some Sunny Day

It’s the summer holidays, so a degree of fighting was always inevitable. We happy three live in a small and slightly cramped house, and short of all going to sit in our own individual spaces all day, we are forced together all the time to some extent or other over these six weeks, whether we want to be or not.

But this summer, things started to turn unbearable for a couple of weeks. Indeed, they’d reached the point at which I had to call a family meeting around the kitchen table to try and get some sort of some order back into this house before I packed a bindle and left them to it.

And there was an answer. “This is about grandad, isn’t it?”, I asked towards the end of the meeting and, and for the first time since the start of it, I was greeted with two sullen faces, both nodding their heads. “I don’t know”, said Younger, his lower lip starting to wobble and a tear rolling down his cheek, “I just miss him.” These are Big Feelings, and all the talking in the world can’t completely prepare kids for them when they arrive.

Dad died on the 13th July, and there was a two and a half week gap between then and the funeral. In the meantime, there was work to do. Relatives and old friends to call, a ceremony to arrange, and a house to be cleared. The calls went as well as could be expected, and the funeral was at least partly already arranged because my sister is just about the most organised person on the planet.

The day of the house clearance was going to be an extremely long one. The matter had already been discussed beforehand. They didn’t own anything of particular value. My parents lived a relatively modest life, always happy with what they already had rather than craving things they couldn’t afford.

There were handful of things of sentimental value that we both wanted. My mum’s stuffed bear, which my grandad had brought back for her from the war (for the avoidance of doubt, he was involved in the D-Day clean-up; he didn’t volunteer to fight for the other side), was my sister’s. The clocking-in clock was mine. But everything else would be going to the tip, if I didn’t want it.

It turned out that there were a lot of things that I did want. We’ve been living in this house for six years, and the things that we moved in with were starting to look a bit tired and tatty. And as a confirmed furniture renovator, I felt it was important to take as much as I had the space for, especially since we were combining this with a trip to the local tip.

For the last couple of years of his life, Dad slept downstairs, in a bedroom that had been converted from the garage which he no longer needed, once his car keys were taken off him. My Older kid had already been through several cheap - and as things turned out, collapsible - single bed frames from Amazon. Dad’s - built of solid and sturdy-looking pine - would be a perfect replacement.

It didn’t end there, either. My kitchen table, as a result of six years of daily use, looked as though it had been dragged out of a hedge backwards, and their dining room table would be a perfect replacement, though whether I needed the high-backed oak chairs that went with it was something of a moot point. There were also two oak cabinets which fitted with the aesthetic of my living room design.

Some of the things that ended up accompanying me back here were at the odd end of the spectrum. A CD micro-system and DVD player were not on the list of things that I ever thought I’d need again, but they also provide me with an ‘in’ on giving the kids an understanding of the importance of physical media. A toasted sandwich maker was precisely the sort of thing that I would never have realised the extent to which I needed it.

And then there was the crockery. My parents had a set of Hornsea Heirloom crockery in green and black. It’s an incomplete set - there remains just one of the six dinner plates, for example - but I liked the idea of bringing it back to life and using it again, while there is enough of it still available and at affordable prices for me to be able to fill in the gaps and make it complete again over time.

More than anything else, though, this stuff all lives on. It’s helped me enormously, to feel as though there’s a part of them which remains close to me. Some of the border on the bizarre. A tie commemorating Enfield winning the 1970 FA Amateur Cup? Sure, why not? A china cat with an exceptionally long neck? I’ll find a use for it. A blue and clear glass ashtray? Well, I don’t smoke any more, but I can still put things in it.

The funeral came around on the 31st July at Crawley Crematorium, which is so far from Crawley town centre that its nearest railway station is Gatwick Airport. It was a couple of miles’ walk and, since my clothing choices these days - especially during the summer - are largely t-shirts and jeans, I didn’t really have anything else to wear beyond a suit that was bought for a January wedding that wasn’t jeans and a t-shirt. I turned up there with a similar complexion to an angry Phil Mitchell, though it soon faded.

As ever with a funeral, we fretted over how many people might turn up. He was a couple of months shy of 90 years old when he died, and many of those that he’d known who were still alive would have been in no state to travel all the way down to Sussex, while there was a number greater than zero of those who were at mum’s funeral but who wouldn’t be at dad’s because they too were now dead. But it was still a good number. Everybody that he’d have wanted to be there was there.

He’d had a surprise for us, too. Just as my mum sat up in bed shortly before her death and informed my sister that, “I have a funeral to attend and I expect to hear Maggie Mae played at it” - and you have little appreciation of how long that song is until you have sat through all five and a half minutes of it in silence at a funeral - so had Dad made an unusual request of his own.

He wasn’t, to the best of anybody’s knowledge, a James Bond fan, but he’d seen Live & Let Die and he wanted Just a Closer Walk With Thee, the music played at the start of that movie and a funeral standard in New Orleans for decades, played at his, so that’s what he got, and he also got What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong as the soundtrack to a couple of minutes of quiet contemplation of his life.

And then the eulogy. Since I can both write a bit and have no fear whatsoever of standing up to speak in public, that was my big responsibility, and I was happy to see the old man off. I recounted the story of how my mum first became aware of him and their lives together, and went through the story of his surprisingly interesting life. I held back the tears because I had already concluded that, no matter how sad his departure from our mortal realm might be for us, his was a life that should be celebrated.

I cracked at Sunset, the bugle call which marks the end of the day in the Royal Navy. An honourable life, well-lived. I felt, for the first time in my entire life, as though I should stand and salute. (I did not.) As the curtain closed and he went on his way to whatever, if anything, comes next, Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Summertime played him out. As I left the chapel, the involuntary thought popped into my head, “He would have loved that funeral, if only it had been someone else’s.”

Back at the ranch, all was peaceful and quiet. My ex-wife had been minding the kids at my house all day, but since it was a Friday they didn’t hang around for too long. I opted to keep myself busy. I went over a mate’s house in the evening, and then the next day came the first weekend of the new football season, which felt like an appropriate way to end the last few weeks or so.

The kids will be fine. Dad is still here, ready to break up any further silly little arguments that should erupt and to sit and talk to them about these big feelings they’re experiencing. They’ve lost all four of their grandparents now, and I do feel guilty about that. I was 43 when Older was born and 45 when younger was, and as an older parent I do feel as though it’s incumbent on me to look after myself in order to limit the amount of stress I may cause them, should I last into my eighties.

And such a time is the right time to feel grateful. I am grateful to my friends, who have gathered round me and made sure that I’ve been okay this last few weeks. I am grateful to my sister and family, for their phenomenal organisation skills which ensured that there has been no unnecessary upset at a difficult time.

I am grateful to his carers, all of whom were at the funeral, for looking after him with grace and good humour. I am grateful to my ex-wife, for looking after the kids when I needed to be elsewhere. And I am grateful to my parents, who lived modest and unassuming lives, and who were the best role models that I could have.

But more than anyone else, I’m grateful to Older & Younger, Wingus & Dingus. They’re only little and they don’t know half as much about the world as they often seem to believe they do, but they do understand love and care, and they have done an incredible amount for me just by being themselves. I’ve been really lucky, with these two.

They’re great kids, even if they do have their moments, and it’s important that they process these Big Feelings in a healthy way. We’ve all been under pressure over the last few weeks - I haven’t been all sweetness and light myself, at time - and the arguments will subside in the fullness of time. For now, though, they’re in bed and all is peaceful. The only sound is the ticking and tocking of that old clocking-in clock. This time, that sound will be with me forever.