Death and cowslips

With thanks to Mark Diacono who gave me the push I needed to write about this.

A true story.

My dad was an army man all his life. A Scot and a Sgt Major, after 22 years in the armed forces he was still fully both of these things when he was demobbed to Dorset with his family to settle into retired ex-military life.

An army life has as much of an effect on the lives of its children as it does the adults. All my life I’ve never really been able to settle into a conventional rhythm after moving country, house and school every 18 months throughout my childhood.

Mum died, dad remarried. He seemed content enough in his new life, although I had long since moved away to London for work in my twenties and didn’t see him often. If truth be told, our relationship was rather an uneasy one and I deliberately put distance between us.

We’d always had an awkward relationship after a difficult childhood and the death of my mum who had always been the peacemaker in the family and the buffer between us. Too similar as people, I guess, although I was loathe to admit it.

Dad had a temper, opinions about everything and a lifetime of giving orders to his regiment of squaddies, so his idea of parenting had been an authoritarian one.

As a quiet, academic and rather nervous child I felt that nothing I achieved had ever been good enough. Dad was unable to show his feelings of love or pride even though I knew they were there. I had been a chronic over-achiever all my life as a consequence, always subconsciously looking for his approval and recognition.

It was on a day in May when I was in Barcelona on business that I got a call on my mobile from my stepmother. My dad was very ill and had been taken to hospital. He wasn’t expected to come out. Could I get back?

I caught the next flight back to London and drove down to Dorset to see him. He’d collapsed at home and had been taken to hospital, been diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and was heavily sedated and unconscious. As I sat beside his hospital bed holding his hand I was struck by how small and frail he seemed. Not at all like the big man that I’d always seen in my minds eye.

It was clear that he was fading. His breathing was even, but faint. He never regained consciousness and I wasn’t sure if he even knew I was there. After several hours of sitting with him, feeling conflicted at my feelings of resentment at my childhood and overwhelmed with guilt for not having spent more time with him as an adult, I had to take a break. My stepmother was by his bedside with him and promised to call if anything changed.

I drove out deep into the Dorset countryside, desperate for a short break in the open air after the stifling confinement of the hospital and the intensity of my feelings. Almost without knowing it I found myself deep in the green solitude of Knowlton Rings.

Knowlton rings is a Neolithic henge near Cranborne Chase with almost perfectly formed circular banks and ditches, a couple of ancient yew trees guarding the north eastern approach and a ruined Norman church smack in the middle of it all. It’s a strange, brooding place, silent but for the wind and the faint, distant noise of the nearby road.

I found myself there alone with my thoughts walking the grassy ramparts of the henge in the late afternoon light when I suddenly looked down and realised that my feet were engulfed in a carpet of yellow cowslips. They were in full flush and I was momentarily overwhelmed by their intense, sweet scent. I’d been there several times over the years but had somehow never noticed them before.

I bent down to pick one, brought it up to my face and inhaled deeply. As I did so the strongest sensation washed over me. My dad was suddenly there with me, the unmistakeable sense of his spirit flooding me. In that moment I knew with absolute certainty that he’d just died and had come to me to say a final goodbye. I’m not a person who believes in the afterlife so this was the most bizarre and overwhelming feeling. After a minute or so his presence left me as if it had departed on the wind.

I returned to my car, shaken. As I climbed back into the drivers seat and prepared to return to the hospital my mobile phone rang. It was my stepmother to tell me that dad had passed away peacefully a few moments ago.

I’ve thought about this day so many times since then. The rational side of me says that it was the emotion of the situation filling my mind with this feeling, that it was simply imagination. But I believe deep within myself that he was there - somehow he was with me at that moment. This conviction has never left me and has shaken me to the core despite the strength of my rational beliefs. I simply can’t explain it.

I think about my dad often. He’ll always be a part of who I am and as I’ve aged I’ve become more forgiving of his parenting and more able to feel the unspoken love which I know was always there.

Parents, eh. In the immortal words of Phillip Larkin,

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had. And add some extra, just for you.

Photo credit: Cowslips at the Henge, Dorsetlass. I’m sorry I don’t know your real name