Living memories: Lindsey's daughters remind her of their dad
Today, I am what’s known as begrutten (Definition: According to Kate’s late mother, begrutten is an old Scots word meaning to have the swollen eyed, blotchy face of someone who has had a good cry (greet)).
I was taking the 19-year-old wean home last night. This would normally be a ten minute round trip, but last night it took me an hour, and thus I missed the beginning of last night’s episode of The Scheme, but that’s another story.
My state of begrutten-ness came about as a result of a conversation about my late husband and father of my two amazing weans. I apologise in advance for the sombre tone of this column, but I wanted to share it with you. I’ve always felt that avoiding talking about Eddie is a bit like denying that he ever lived. Furthermore, and for what it’s worth, I don’t believe in life after death, or supernatural occurrences, as you’ll know from a previous rant. Phrases like “passed away” make me cringe.
So the wean and I are in the car, blithely singing along to Paolo Nutini, when all of a sudden she asks “How did you and Dad meet?” I was a bit taken aback by this question to be honest because I couldn’t believe she didn’t know this story already. Sadly, she doesn’t remember her Dad on account of her only being a year and a bit when he died. I can’t imagine what that’s been like for her. I just can’t. She has recurring dreams about him where he’s there but he doesn’t speak to her. That makes me cry inside. I always tended to worry more about her sister, who was six when her dad died. I thought she’d feel the loss more, having known him for six years, and having some memory of being with him.
I was 38-weeks pregnant with the younger one when Eddie was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was 29. It was horrific. Your worst nightmare come true. All of a sudden the future we thought we had was pulled away, like a rug snatched from under our feet.
I started to grieve for him then, because I knew things wouldn’t end well. I remember brushing my teeth at the sink while he was in the bath a few weeks after his first bout of chemotherapy. I was overwhelmed with everything, and had just signed myself out of hospital after having Hannah by Caesarean section. I started to cry. He looked at me and said: “Don’t cry. I’m sorry”. As if it was his fault. As if he’d chosen to inflict this horrible thing on us. I don’t know why Eddie got lung cancer, he certainly didn’t deserve it. Who does?
Anyway, I always assumed Hannah knew how her Dad and I had met. Apparently not. So I explained that he’d been a friend of my brother and we met when he saw me wafting through the house in a haze of 18-year-old hormones and Charlie perfume.
It must be hard not to know your Dad. She and her sister both love to hear stories about him. Thankfully, there are stories aplenty. He was a bit of a lad. They love it when old friends of their dad tell them about the times they went to Wigan Casino or the Twisted Wheel, or when they say “Are you Eddie Mason’s lassie? You’re his spitting image”.
Hannah is the image of her dad, right enough. She even has mannerisms of his that she couldn’t possibly have known about. Sometimes I look at her and she’s chewing the side of her mouth the way he used to do when he was concentrating on something and it makes my heart leap. I said earlier that I don’t believe in life after death, but in a way I do, because I just need to look at Rachael and Hannah and there he is, looking right back at me. I’ve always felt that Hannah was searching for her dad. Searching for some forgotten memory or some vital piece of information that I’ve missed out about him that would make her unlock a memory. But the truth is, she IS the something she’s searching for. She IS her dad. She can’t escape that. It makes me feel good.
So I returned home last night, begrutten, after retelling the story about how we met, and about what he was like with her as a baby (brilliant - with both his daughters - full of fun) and of course the story about his illness and how he died. We even laughed a bit at the story about my phoning the doctor one night when he was very ill and I thought he’d slipped into unconsciousness. When the doctor came and I showed him to the bedroom Eddie was nowhere to be seen. For a split second I thought he’d died and been spirited away by angels. Bizarrely, he’d had the strength to get out of bed and go to the toilet. The doctor just shrugged at me and we shook our heads in disbelief.
She wanted to know where/how he died. I couldn’t believe she hadn’t heard this story a hundred times. I certainly wasn’t hiding it from her or her sister. He died at home. The nurse told me that the hearing was the last thing to go and that I should get into bed beside him and talk to him. I was scared I would hurt him but I did it anyway. He died at 6am on 16th May 1992, age 31. Far too soon.
