I don’t cry much. Only when I’m ill with some sort of mental ailment and, obviously, when I’m watching It’s A Wonderful Life. But five years ago to the day, I could have cried a river because it was the day my father, Anthony Johansen, died.
A few days after he died, I flew to Ottawa, where he had lived happily almost ever after, to attend and speak at his funeral. That was a painful journey too. I had not prepared my mind for the journey and its different stages and every time I did something, like check-in, or ask the Air Canada staff if I could sit on my own due to the mess I was in or try and order something from the cabin staff, I was in bits. I had seen many people cry uncontrollably whereas, mostly, I had been able to control my emotions, at least in public. But not this time.
I had not seen my father since May 2009 when I flew to be with him for his 80th birthday. He was fit and well and looked as though he would be fit and well for a few more good years. It came as such a shock when I got the call to say he had been admitted to hospital with respiratory problems just after Christmas 2010 and things got steadily worse until that day, 28 February 2011, when I got the news he had died.
I had been warned in the days and weeks before he died that it was unlikely my dad would make a full recovery and later that he would never recover at all. I got all this via email and telephone from the other side of the world. I knew that I would need to fly to see him, preferably before he died, but when to return? In the end, I knew I would never see him alive again and the next flight to Canada would be to attend his funeral. There was, I later discovered through bereavement counselling, a large element of guilt on my part. I should have flown out before he died. To hell with the cost. He was my dad. I couldn’t afford to go, but I should have gone anyway. And so it went, until I learned, a few years later actually, that I had honestly tried to do what I thought was right and there were no wrongs and rights. Now and again, I still wrestle with the dilemma and sometimes, when it’s dark and my mind is racing away with thoughts and ideas, I think maybe I did something wrong, but it can’t be undone now.
My father was a sailor, who joined the Merchant Navy at the age of 15 and found himself sailing the Liberty ships across the U boat infested Atlantic Ocean to bring supplies for desperate Britons. When still at the Cathedral School in Bristol, he escaped death when the Luftwaffe exploded a bomb just outside his classroom. He started with nothing and worked his way up to be captain of the ship. And then, in his very late thirties, studying for a degree in commerce in McGill University, Montreal, whereafter he had a stellar career including a period working the the private office of PM Pierre Trudeau. The working class Bristol boy did all right.
Given that we were half the world away from each other, meetings were relatively few and far between. I never begrudged his ambition to make a new life in Canada and in the end things worked out well, with him finally meeting his soul mate in retirement, Joy Phillips, with whom he had a long and happy life. It is not a scenario I would recommend, living away from family and friends, and not one I would even consider, especially with the Atlantic Ocean in the way, but then, I did not have the relentless drive, belief, ambition and vision of my dad. I just wish he’d lived up the road, but that’s just me being selfish. By the time we parted for the last time in May 2009, we were as close as I always hoped we could be. That’s a special memory for me.
I’m the senior one now, the oldest person in my family. My parents and grandparents are long gone and I am more aware with each passing year of my mortality. I still have my two brothers, Noel and Vaughan, from my dad’s second marriage and I still have Joy, technically my step mum, so part of my dad’s side of the family remains.
I am the worst person in the world at handing out useful advice but mine is always to put your family and friends first, above everything and anything else. Put them ahead of money, put them ahead of ambition and breathe it all in, remembering that things will not be the same forever. I still have my memories and old photographs, but nothing comes close to being there and that’s what I miss most of all.
The day before I flew back from my last visit to see him, I noticed he was putting a vinyl record on his turntable. It was George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. That album was where we met right in the middle. He loved it every bit as much as I did. He knew all the songs and many of the words and I’ll play it again tonight in his memory.
