My hero

I’ve just re-read, in virtually one sitting, my dad Anthony Johansen’s book Fair Wind and a Following Sea, based on his stories and compiled and edited by his widow Joy Johansen. Anthony died on 28 February 2011 and his death continues to affect me more than any other death I have known. Which for me is very odd. I never, usually, commemorate relevant dates of the departed.

My mother, Elly, died in 1999. I don’t quite know how she made it to 75 given her tobacco-heavy lifestyle. Long before she was 60, the ravages of heart disease and circulation problems had overwhelmed her. The last ten years were trying and difficult, mainly for her, obviously, but there is nothing pleasurable about the closest of close relatives dying slowly, in agony. When she finally died, I was of course upset, but in other ways it was a deliverance. I was only crying for my own loss, really.

Anyway, I had gotten good value out of Elly. I had lived with her for the first 22 years of my life. I knew her as well as I knew anyone. More so. I understand her lifetime’s struggle against abject poverty in wartime Rotterdam and her constant, sometimes desperate, efforts to put bread on the table for us. Anthony and Elly had split up sometime in the mid 1960s and whilst I know he lived in Bristol for some years, I was so young I don’t remember him ever living with us. Then, he left for Canada to begin a new life.

No bitterness from me. Love breaks down, sometimes, and I have been there more than once. If a relationship dies, please attach the ‘do not resuscitate’ sign. There’s no need to pretend.

Because our lives were separated by thousands of miles, the relationship with Anthony was not as deep as it might otherwise have been. This was no fault of Anthony, who tried as hard as any father could possibly do to compensate. He made sure we continued to a have a roof over our heads, he made every effort to keep in touch by visits to the UK and par avion. He tried much harder than I did. But my mental health deteriorated from around age 12 and it has never recovered. I looked inwards. I still do. I don’t want to see anyone today.

As Anthony got older, I became aware of his mortality and my own. They say you don’t miss what you never had, but if you think what you could have had, as they used to say in TV quiz shows, you definitely can miss what you never had. Everything that followed in my dysfunctional, often unhappy, often depressed life was as a direct consequence of my childhood and beyond. When I flew to Canada in 2004 for his 75th birthday, we became father and son. In her life, Elly tried to compensate, for sure, but bear in mind she was a stranger in a strange land, a simple Dutch woman with no family close at hand and no social network.

Five years later and I flew to Canada again to join the celebrations for his 80th birthday. For the first time, he looked old and slightly frail. Not in mind or spirit, though. Those days, spent with my dad, were some of the best and most valuable of my life. I never saw him again. The next time I flew to Canada was in 2011 for his funeral, or rather the rich celebration of his incredible life.

With his passing went a silly dream that somehow, even though he was nearing old age and I was deep into middle age, that we could be the father and son we never were, that somehow his intellectual brilliance, his charisma and his guidance would still retrieve something from the wreckage of my life.

Sometimes, I am 22 again, living alone in a big house, staying in my room when I could be going out, taking comfort from my music collection, reading endless music and railway magazines, wanting to stay there forever.

I wish I had listened and learned more to this towering figure in my life. I could never live up to his standards, nor rise to the educational and professional levels of success he enjoyed. Both educationally and professionally, it never happened for me. I have never written this before but there were times when I believed I was not fit to be his son. I was not worthy. He deserved better.

Anthony is the one I miss. It was long distance love and whilst he was the one who upped sticks, the younger me was always the one who created barriers. Almost nine years since his passing, his memory sits front and centre of my mind and I miss so much the life we never had. If I had listened, if I had followed his advice, maybe I might not be such a basket case today?

Belatedly, he’s my hero. The war hero, the working class boy made great. Maybe I acknowledged it was too late, but at least I managed to acknowledge it in the end. And I wish I could fly to Canada just one more time and tell him.