Down to a sunless sea: memories of my dad

I’m going to be releasing a new piece every Thursday for at least 8 weeks. General content note: death, dementia, old age, mental health issues

9 min readSep 28, 2017

Friendship: Part 1

My earliest memory is of walking around a park in Kings Lynn, Norfolk with my father. When we went to the park, we always passed a kind of castle thing that was always locked. But the day I remember really clearly is the day that the castle was open and we could go inside. I don’t remember what was inside; I just remember the excitement of this building that was always locked being suddenly open. I don’t know what the park was called. I don’t really remember much about Norfolk — we left there when I was three. But I remember the sensation of surprise and joy that the unlocked castle gave me.

The only other memory I have from that time is playing on the swing that we had on the apple tree in our back garden. But I’m not sure if that’s a fake memory based on my brother’s memories, or a real one of my own.

I know the castle memory is real because my dad remembers it too. Or at least, he did when his memory still worked. Having spoken to my dad about that period, I know that my dad looked after me most of the time. So pretty much daily he would take me to the park, sit under a tree, roll himself a joint and watch me play.

These days I roll his joints for him because his fingers don’t bend very easily. It’s one of various little things I do when I go round to his house — opening jars, checking he has fire wood and any other duties as necessary. The most important part of these visits is checking in with him, spending time with him, making sure that his quality of life is as good as it can be. It used to be that we spent my visits having really great conversations. We still talk, but our conversations are much more limited because of his memory and processing speed.

When I was born he was 58, back then smoking weed was a recreational pastime for my dad. At 93, that is still a part of it. But it’s also a form of self-medication, to make his ailments less painful. I self-medicate with weed too: it helps calm my anxiety, and it can help me climb out of a depressed state. Like all medication, weed will not work well for everyone. And like with all medication, there can be side effects. One of these is that it can affect your memory, which isn’t good for my dad. Another is that it can make you paranoid, which isn’t good for me. But by and large, until a week ago, we have both decided it’s worth the trade off. And we have smoked weed together since I was a teenager. I think he started in the 60s. Although it wasn’t his generation, the 1960s are kind of my dad’s spiritual home. We both like to smoke when we write.

After a recent visit to the memory clinic my dad has finally decided to give weed up, it’s disadvantages currently outweigh what it gives him.

My dad is still writing though. He often sees writing as his reason for living now. It’s a project he can focus on. He’s given up trying to write fiction because he finds it too hard to keep the stories in his head. This means that for the first time in his life, he is writing autobiography. All my life, I’ve repeatedly suggested he should do that, and whilst you could argue that he’s left it too late in some ways, he hasn’t because he’s no longer able to write in the complicated, conceptual ways he always has done, and so the writing he is doing now is simple, clearer and possibly the most accessible work he has done in a long time.

I showed an early draft of this essay to some friends and they suggested that, whether it was true or not, it felt implausible for my dad to be presented so positively. It made them doubt the narrator’s credibility. Our relationship seemed too good to be true. In this last draft, I am trying to put in more criticisms and explore more of the complexities within our relationship. But at the end of the day, it may still sound implausible. Certainly you shouldn’t trust the narrator. I’m writing this in an incredibly emotional place, and I come from a family that loves to create mythology. My dad is probably the biggest myth maker of all of us. And despite my attempts, I am sure his romanticism will creep into my words.

But it’s important to keep in mind — for plausibility’s sake — that the story of my relationship with my dad is only one part of his life. Crucially, it’s only one of the ways he has been a father: the context of my childhood has been very different from the context of my siblings’ childhoods. For example, I was the only one whose birth he was present for. When he first became a father, you didn’t let husbands in: they were expected to be outside being irresponsible. And my dad definitely, in many ways, fulfilled that role: while he was retired for most of my life, for the rest of my siblings, he was someone who went out to work. He was active in all of our childhoods. He changed all of our nappies. But that doesn’t make every version of him as a father one where he was really progressive. I knew him only after he had split up with my mum; my siblings experienced his divorces.

I used to get annoyed by people who said they were best friends with their parents. But as time has gone on, I’ve come to realise my sneering was just jealousy. I have a complicated relationship with my mother, and I resented people who had something simpler. Maybe part of my change in attitude around this comes from realising that I could be described as being best friends with my dad. I don’t like the idea of friendship having a hierarchy, so I still feel squicky about the idea that my dad is my best friend, but I can definitely say he’s my oldest friend, both in terms of the length of our friendship and his literal age.

When my dad is with young children, he treats them in a way that I think is remarkably rare. He asks them questions and really listens to their answers. He is interested in what they have to say. He treats them like they are equals at the same time as making sure they are safe. If he has to set boundaries, he explains to them why. He involves them in the conversation.

He was a primary school teacher for a brief time in between his documentary film-making, before he left due to falling out with the way he was expected to teach. He remembers the children he taught then with great love. Or at least, he did before his mind put them out of his memory’s reach. He still gets excited about his grandchildren, great grandchildren and other children who he feels like a grandparent to. He told me the other day that he loves to see babies now even more than he used to: “I am on the way out and they are on the way in, and somehow it feels like we can meet in the middle.”

He’s always been interested in people and is always making new friends. He’s had four children over a big chunk of time, and our friends have become his friends. He isn’t an old person who has been isolated within his generation. He has people who love him spanning his 93 years. When I see my friends, they always ask after him. His funeral will be well-attended.

He joined my band as our official videographer when he was in his 80s and I was in my 20s. He came to all our gigs and filmed us. The band performed at his 85th birthday. When my partner and I set up a play-reading group, he came every month to read plays with a group of people in their 30s. I’ve made him part of all my friendship groups, which I think will make it more painful for me when he dies: every part of my life will remind me of him.

He sees people less now, partly because he is less mobile and partly because people’s lives have made it harder for them to see him. But also he isn’t low-maintenance these days. For most of his life, he has had a pretty light touch on the world; now he has needs. In many ways, he can’t be the person he used to be. He can’t really hear people when he’s at gatherings or parties. He can’t always remember the things that are being talked about. Parties used to be his natural habitat, but now he sits there, unable to follow the conversations, alone, surrounded by people.

He does still see many of his friends though. Every so often, he travels across London to meet up with a friend who he went to school with. He loves to have people over. He may find it harder to connect now, but it still brings him joy.

You can hear an old recording of my dad reading a story at around 43.40

Dad used to record himself reading stories on cassette tape for the children in the family. And often, he would offer the children the mic too. A few years ago, he converted the cassettes to digital and gave them to me. When I listen to them, I’m transported to various beds I slept in during my childhood. In a few of the tapes, he gives me and my brother the space to create stories, songs and performances. The earliest tapes are from 1984, when I was three years old, they are really great examples of how he is with young children, and I guess they are recordings of the first times I created stories. I don’t remember us recording them. I heard them for the first time when I was 30.

When I say my dad is my oldest friend, I mean he was the first person I ever shared mutual respect and interest with. In the recordings, you can hear friendship.

This is part of a collection of essays that I will be releasing here on medium weekly over the next few months. Click here to read the introduction.

Read part 5 here: