I loved my dad with all my heart.
When I think back, some of my happiest memories are of us going as a family to National Trust castles and gardens. Mum would pack a picnic for our days out, or sometimes when we went away for the whole weekend. Camber Sands was always fun – there was a sense of freedom there that I can still feel if I close my eyes.
Mum was a good cook. I remember being told off for putting my elbows on the table. She was strict with me. I wasn’t allowed to be angry; she didn’t know how to handle me when I was upset or overwhelmed.
I used to slam doors. That was how my feelings came out. She could be violent with me – she would slap me around the face when I was scared. According to my brother’s wife, I was actually a lovely little girl. That makes me realise the problem was never that I was “bad”; it was that my emotions weren’t welcome.
My dad had already lived a whole other life before I was born. He served in the Army in World War II, and my brother has his medals now. When the war ended he became a policeman.
But at heart he was an artist. He made crystal jewellery, and I used to love going to the crystal shop in Tunbridge Wells with him. In my mind it’s still there. Mum would invite her friends and neighbours over in the evenings, talk about the crystals and sell them. Dad spent most of his free time in his shed out the back, quietly creating.
He was amazingly artistic – he could even write the Lord’s Prayer on the back of a postage stamp. I wish I still had that stamp.
I’ve got his war diaries here with me. He served in Malta and Egypt. Later, Mum and Dad took me to Malta for a couple of weeks on holiday. Sometimes Mum would wake me at 4am with, “Get up, Mandy, we’re going on holiday.” I can still hear her voice when I remember that.
In retrospect, my childhood was good in many ways – there were holidays, picnics, castles, gardens, crystals, and parents who worked hard and were involved in the community. But my mum was also violent toward me and my sister. I don’t know about my brother; he moved out before I was born.
Then Dad got sick.
That’s when the grief really began. I’ll write about that in my next post.
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