This week I visited my father’s last house, the one where he died, but probably the one I also knew least. My brother is clearing it out and I went to see if there were any books I wished to claim out of his vast (maybe 10,000 strong) collection.
Despite him dying in April, this was really the first moment when I felt the hard thump of grief and loss hit my heart. When I looked up at the row upon row of books, I remembered how like him I am. For my father’s other children and inheritors of his collection, the books are more of a bind and a headache, for me I wish I could keep every single one.
I love books. They are my ultimate escape hatches, opening their pages and disappearing within; they quench my thirst for knowledge, momentarily but refreshingly; they offer support when paths I might choose are challenging or solitary; and they guide me, from one stepping stone to the next.
So I walked in and felt the tears rise, overwhelmed with the task of choosing just enough to remember him by but not too many that will overcrowd our already bulging shelves at home. I ran my fingers along the spines asking for guidance to lead me to just the right ones and my eyes flickered back and forth between the titles. Freud, Bertrand Russell, Havelock Ellis, Jung…. too many volumes from all of these masters. Books on every aspect of mind exploration – child psychology, suicide, love, marriage, homosexuality, work ethics, statistics; onto the biographies, histories, games and maths. Barely touching the fiction.
And it hit me square on.
I am my father’s daughter.
I look so like my mother, but we are worlds apart in our thinking. And whilst I cannot claim to be simpatico with my father’s thoughts, we did ‘get’ each other, just about. His emails to me in the year before he died were of love and forgiveness, not in an easy and wholesome way, nothing fairytale or Hollywood about them, but enough, for him and for me.
And now he has gone, the maverick, the explorer, the risk taker and adventurer. He passed me the baton at birth and I have hesitated, run with it, thrown it away in disgust and picked it up again guiltily. But I am my father’s daughter and I will carry the baton by my side as courage and support for the paths that I dare to choose.