Please Mind The Gap

The gap of a father is one that never closes. An exploration how my father's sudden death has impacted me and how I’ve never really dealt with it.

Photo by AXP Photography on Unsplash

The gap of a father is one that never closes.

Fill it, leap over it, or even try to move away from it. The gap is still there. It is always there, like a lost piece of Tupperware missing its lid. Sometimes, all my pretending slips into forgetting. But before too long, my foot will catch in the gap, and I will fall.

Today is one of those days.

Twenty-one years ago today, the fickle finger of fate scooped out my gap when my father died suddenly that Thursday morning. I was ten years old. I was old enough to understand the practicalities of death. I understood that when I last saw him, I was going, and now he was gone. Never to come back. The night before, we sat and watched reruns of old quiz shows, and that would never happen again. Never have my fingers glide through the woolly dark hairs on his arms. Gone. Never be able to ask him how he somehow knew all the answers to a quiz show that originally aired twenty years ago. Gone. Never get to cushion up while watching TV and fall asleep. Gone. But I was too young to understand that the gap left would never be gone.

Learning to live with the gap is also learning to survive.

I have often struggled with the concept of missing someone, and maybe that’s because the feeling of missing someone arrives once you see them again. But early on, I got used to the idea of not interacting with him again and that the missing sensation never came. That’s not to say I never thought about him, I do. Or that I would never speak to him in my thoughts, I do. Or that I never dream about him. I do. Clearly, I felt something was missing.

When the cavity emerges, the first instinct is to fill it. But no concoction of father-figured asphalt will work. Children who suffer bereavement are naturally vulnerable. With vulnerability also comes impressionability, and both of them became the spades I used to fill the gap. They were the only tools to hand. No one around me, from my biological family to the whole mountain range of social workers and care home staff, thought to equip me with anything different. But they attracted father figures like magnets attract metal. I had no control over this. Often, they were rusty decapitated things that should be avoided at all costs.

The second is to leap over it. For a time, this works, but practice does not make perfect, and eventually, it becomes exhausting. Over time, the edges blend into the surroundings. This is pretending becomes forgetting, and I will misstep. Like a cleverly disguised cartoon trap hole, I will fall headfirst with no one to help rescue me.

The third is to move away from it. To use abstraction as a response to trauma and avoid the gap. I do a lot. I make myself so busy, that I don’t have time to deal with my trauma. This avoidance has been helpful as it has manifested itself in a drive that has pushed me to achieve some success in life. But my selfishness in avoiding my gap impacts those around me.

The fingerprint has remained on me as an adult.

In his memoir, Barack Obama says that people either live up to their father’s expectations or try to make up for their father’s mistakes. I think I do both, although I was too young to know exactly what my father’s expectations of me were. I know I definitely try to make up for what I believed were his mistakes.

My father was an honest man who loved his family and worked hard. Incredibly hard. He worked as a taxi driver. His colleagues would tell me he worked all hours god-sent, and I often believe this is where my intense work ethic has come from. However, his job was essentially to transport people to their exciting lives. He died at the age of 39. Was it worth working that hard? Sacrificing all that time with his family? After all that, he would die, and I would end up in a children’s home anyway. Maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe no matter what job he had, this would always happen. Maybe this is how he dealt with his gap.

Adversity has shaped me.

I learnt from a young age that I could die at any moment. That the fickle finger will come down and, in one poke, push you out of the party. Nothing sticks a rocket up your arse like knowing you could die soon. I am 86 months away from reaching the age he was when he died. The rational part of my brain tells me it’s unlikely the same fate will fall upon me, but the fingerprint is still there. Burnt into me, like a scar. A birthmark. It now manifests as an aching drive to achieve something, to be the interesting person in the back of his taxi. It has pushed me to insane levels of burnout just so I can say I did something.

Am I making up for his mistakes or just repeating them? Is it good enough that if I die at 39, my children will be able to say this is what my dad did, rather than this is what I did with my dad?

The trick is to accept that the gap is there.

It has taken me 21 years to acknowledge this gap and that it will never close, never be filled, and will just be there. Acceptance shrinks the gap. Instead of falling into it, it can be walked over like a small pothole with little consequence.

We have no choice about leaving a gap, but we do get to choose how it is left. We get to decide its shape, size, and tools for those who must deal with it. Perhaps this is achieved through acceptance.

My father died 21 years ago today. It is twice the time I spent with him while he was alive. I now accept the gap between him is there. It will always be there. It will never close.

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