My Dad’s Back
the boat now belongs to us
No. Unfortunately, I don’t mean that my father has returned. I’m not sure how I’d react to that. I mean his back. Literally. My bro-in-law sent me this pic of Dad this morning. Every time I see pics of Dad it makes me cry inside. I get a lump in my throat and a kind of anxiety in my guts – thinking, “No – it can’t be so. Dad is really gone?”
I particularly remember the curve of Dad’s back – how his shoulders were slightly rounded.
After he died I dreamt about the curve of his back and shoulders many times. I’d put my hand upon it, comfortingly. It was strange. About a week after Dad died – he seemed to inhabit my dreams. Part of me thinks he was visiting me.
He’d appear, all nervous, in the backseat of dream cars while I was making a film – or in one case, he was outside my bedroom window. As if he wasn’t really supposed to visit me in a dream. I knew what he wanted. A hug from his Son.
I’m still, one year on, dreaming about my father and I don’t think I’ll ever get over his appauling and unfair demise.
Fuck you, God.
