And the most telling of all—how did I miss it? Every night this week, Dad waiting for me in the evening with robust, hearty meals—rich beef stews and pastas and baked chicken. He’s eating well again! He’s been quiet, but it’s the old kind of quiet—the kind that allows space for me to talk, not the kind of tense, miserable silence that told me he was too bereaved to listen. And now, after months of introspection, he’s prompting me to share.
“You’re doing a little better,” I blurt. He tilts his head a little, thoughtful.
“I will miss your mother every minute until I join her on the other side, Lottie,” he says quietly. “But she wouldn’t want me to spend the rest of my life bitter.” He paused, then added with a wry chuckle, “She wouldn’t have allowed it, actually, and I know that for a fact.”
There are unspoken words at the end of that sentence. About me. About my bitterness and the ferocious anger that still burns so fiercely in me, every bit as destructive as it was when I found out she was gone. And that’s too bad, because I’m still not ready to let any of that go. I’m curious about the change in Dad though, because now that I’ve acknowledged it to myself, I start to wonder.
He isn’t just calmer, he’s focused. Steady. So much more his old self.
As for me, I haven’t missed a day at work, but I haven’t been fully present in that classroom since I returned from my bereavement leave. I’m with those five-year-olds all day long and I spend every second of my work hours pretending I’m the woman I used to be. My heart isn’t in it anymore. The loss of my mother has changed me in a way I’m not sure I can come back from.
“What’s the secret, Dad?” I whisper, throat tight. “How do I stop feeling like this?” Some days, the students in my class do something I know is funny or adorable but I have to force myself to smile. Last week, little Aoife Byrne finally mastered the letters of her name. It’s a feat that’s taken a year of concentrated effort because of her developmental challenges, but I felt no spark of pride or relief. Instead, I am numb or sad or angry all the time, no longer capable of the joy I once took for granted in my life and my job.
“I lived such a wonderful life with your mother, you know,” Dad says. “Truly, we shared so many wonderful years—”
“But she was only fifty-three,” I interrupt him sharply. “You were meant to have more time. Don’t you feel cheated?”
“Cheated?” He considers the word, then gives me a soft look. “There would never have been enough years, love. I’d never have had my fill of that woman! And think of all we shared. You…your brother…a beautiful granddaughter. We built a marvelous home, and we supported one another in our careers and we spent all of those lovely Saturdays in the garden and honestly, when I look back, it feels like a glorious dream.” When Dad becomes emotional, his speech slows even more, the slur becoming more and more pronounced. He pauses now, collecting himself, then adds roughly, “I’ve felt stuck since she died.”
“That’s how I feel.”
“A few weeks ago, I was looking at our old photo albums and I found one of us standing together outside of her family home in 1941. Just a few weeks before that day, I’d learned that my family was gone and the look on my face… I was still in shock when that photo was taken.” He pauses, overcome with emotion again, and my heart aches at the pain in his voice. He was the eldest of five children, but his parents and siblings were killed during the Liverpool Blitz when their home was destroyed in an air raid. “I could barely drag myself out of bed but your mother told me I needed to find a way to move forward. She had much the same advice for me in the dying days of the war when I was confronted by a whole other kind of grief. She used to tell me ‘Noah, you will not bring any one of your loved ones back for even a moment by refusing to live your own life.’” I look out to the water, my eyes stinging with tears. I hear those words as if she’s whispering them to me herself, but I still don’t have a clue how to apply them. “Twice already she brought me back to life by pointing me to look beyond the immediacy of my loss. This time it was the mere memory of that advice that woke me up. I need something to focus on so I’ve decided to take on a new project.”
“At work?”
Mum was a schoolteacher, just as I am, but Dad owns a small chain of auto mechanic shops—his pride and joy, second only to those of us lucky enough to be his family. He reaches down into the newspaper to withdraw a fat but likely cold chip. Wrigley watches hopefully as Dad raises the chip to his mouth, then slumps again when Dad chews the whole thing in one bite.
“The idea came to me when I looked at that photo, actually,” he says. “It got me thinking about those days again. You know I served.”
He rarely talks about the war, but I’ve seen photos of him as a young man in uniform, and in one, I recall he was holding a spanner.
“You worked as an army mechanic, right?”
“Well, no,” he says carefully. I glance at him in surprise. “I left school at sixteen to enlist.”
“Sixteen,” I breathe, shaking my head. “Dad, that’s so young.”
“Yes, I was young enough that they’d only take me with my parents’ permission, but my mum and dad were thrilled to give it. I’d never been good at school, but I was good with my hands, so it made sense for me to enlist and learn a trade. They were so proud when I qualified…” Dad trails off, draws in a deep breath, then finishes slowly, “…as a flight mechanic.”
A flight mechanic? I turn to Dad, eyebrows high.
“Wait. Are you telling me you trained on planes before cars? Why don’t I know this already?”
“It was always my dream to work on airplanes, right from when I was a little boy,” Dad says wistfully. “And it was incredible work. I loved the problem-solving and the challenge of it—I mean, honestly Lottie, it was just so bloody cool. I spent my whole school years feeling stupid, but I felt like the smartest man in the world once I knew how to make a plane work.”
Dad’s always shown a vague interest in planes, but he’s never seemed especially passionate about aviation. Not like this. Even as he’s speaking, there’s a wondrous glint in his eye.
“But you work on cars,” I say stupidly, as if he might have forgotten. “You always have.” Dad glances at me, and I add weakly, “At least, as long as I’ve been alive.”
“I came out of the war a changed man. I knew I needed to reinvent myself and to be completely frank, my mind wasn’t up to the challenge of resuming aviation work. I mean, cars are still plenty complex. Still challenging. But given my…” He waves toward his head, and my eyes widen.
“The car accident? I thought you said that happened when you were a kid.”
“Well, I was a kid. I was only in my twenties. And it probably was a car accident but…”
“But what?”
“My memories of that day aren’t perfect, that’s all. Anyway, after the war, it was helpful for me to go back to basics and learn a new trade. So, I went right back to the start of an apprenticeship, this time with cars.”