The month began with Dad’s funeral. Driving back to my home city once again. I cannot deny how strange it was to be there. On the day of arrival, I wandered around the neighbourhood where I’d lived some of my childhood years, the first place I could clearly recall living in. The place where my parents were still together. I walked past the house that we’d lived in. It seemed so much smaller than I’d remembered it. I looked at the entrance to passageway between the terraced houses. In the past, these passageway entrances were all open. I noted as I walked up my old neighbourhood road that all the passage entrances now had lockable iron gates. 

There were burglars in the 70’s, are there more burglars now, or have we all become less trusting? 

I recalled how the area would be rife with children bombing around on their push bikes, now it was just eerily quiet. This past and present overlapping was a very strange emotion.

A similar feeling that I’d experienced in other parts of the city, was that ‘It looks the same, yet almost everything is different’ 

The place was awash with memories now decades old, like a lifetime ago. These memories made me feel like a kind of living ghost, seeing the present with my physical eyes, seeing so many details of a long lost time inwardly.  It caused a particular kind of melancholia, which was in its own way a kind of pre-funeral meditation. 

The following day, family and friends gathered to bury Dad in some beautiful woodland. 

The dread of eventually losing parents, is a universal feeling that I think most people are familiar with.

I felt fortunate that I’d managed to get as far as five decades of knowing and loving dad. We’d been in regular contact, even though we lived in different parts of the country. I felt somewhat haunted by the most recent memory of our final conversation. He was his usual old self, I was grateful that our call ended with ‘I love you.’  Watching Dad’s casket being lowered into the ground felt like the closing of a book, knowing that the story was over. A final full stop.

After this final ceremony, we moved on to have a wake.  I saw many of Dad’s old friends there and caught up with them. I was struck by just how much everyone had aged since we’d last met. 

 (Not that I was in any position to judge.  Last time any of them had seen me, I was in my early twenties, how much I must have changed, transitioning from youthful lad to someone who has a more than a passing resemblance to Catweazel. FFS!) 

This aside, it was a good wake. Even though I’m agnostic in my views, there was a part of me that hoped something of Dad was in the air around us, approving of the gathering, In life he certainly would have done. 

Returning home, I began sifting through old boxes of clothing that I’ve kept in storage, many of them are old t-shirts that I’ve kept from my twenties and thirties. Clothing in plastic boxes is a wasted garment, so I decided to have an eBay purge, which is still ongoing. I enjoyed taking photos of the old garments, realising that I have photos from the past with younger versions of myself wearing them. There’s probably a remix project in the making here, combining old and new photos with a story or two, whilst sending the clothing items to a new owner.