The Loss of Love
I lost Daniel and his mother, both casualties of the Estonia Ferry Disaster, September 28, 1994.
Daniel was fourteen years old. He was an adult. He was my son. No boy was ever born who loved the sea more than Daniel; he wasn’t born for any other reason than to wade into the water, and should have been born here, on the rocks of the Mendocino shoreline, and not within the crumbling asbestos walls of a maternity hospital in Oban, Scotland.
He arrived in the world weighing 8lbs and 14oz.
Until he was five years of age, Daniel wasn’t a child you could love more than any other child, but after his fifth birthday, that all changed. His mother and I bought him a Shetland pony, being fortunate to live on farming land. We called his pony ‘Barnaby Rudge,’ no bigger than a Saint Bernard dog. Barnaby followed Daniel everywhere, even into the kitchen of the old barn house, to his mother’s disgust and my amusement.
Life in the open air made Daniel a sturdy child, with ruddy cheeks, so that his face resembled an October apple. I’d look out from the window of my study to see him sitting on the grass amid a flock of sheep, listening to his mother constantly telling him not to pick up the dark brown ‘marbles’ scattered liberally over the grassland, alas this he only learned after his first taste!
After their day’s work in the pasture, the dogs would rush up to him, licking his face, setting him to giggling. Daniel was just eight years old when we left the island, and over the next two years of his life, his feet touched land but a few times as his mother and I fulfilled our dream of sailing around the world.
Did Daniel miss home?
I think so, most especially his pony, but he settled down after a month or two. I often ask myself if Daniel loved life on the ocean or was guided by some spiritual need of his father. He was just eight, hardly old enough to make his own decisions, but one overriding ‘plus’ in Daniel’s mind was no more school; Daniel hated school.
Once a week, I could count on his teacher coming by the farmhouse with the same story; Daniel not sitting still in class, disrupting the lesson, disadvantaging those children who behaved. Sure, that was Daniel; if he had an aura around him, it was Indigo Blue.
Barnaby Rudge was the first thing Daniel ever missed that tore at his heart. It was almost two years to the day when we returned. Daniel could stand with his legs astride Barnaby and not put weight on his back. It was honestly a shock to us to see how much he had grown. Our voyage had taken us around the world, stopping off in places like Gambia, South Africa, and New Zealand for a couple of weeks at a time to do some snorkeling and diving but mostly to eat ashore for a few days.
We were unprepared for, what we didn’t consider, was that Daniel’s life at sea separated him from the natural growing up of a boy. When we returned home, he found difficulty adapting to life on the island, becoming reclusive, not wanting friends around, not wanting to play any games. It disturbed us greatly. Had we done this to him? Daniel took himself off to the harbour just about every day, often playing hooky from school.
I knew what was happening.
When he came home in the evenings, he had a look I recognized, where the sun and wind had cracked and bronzed his skin, and his imagination had been working overtime. It was time to move Daniel back into the idea of school, which proved to be no more successful than his first years. Daniel became rebellious. It gave his mother and me some heartache. He was losing his patience all too often, not just with his friends but with us, his family. He sulked and skulked alone in his room. When we sat him down to talk, it was hopeless. We got the silent treatment. When he spoke, he said,
“Why aren’t we away? What is the point of being here? I don’t want to be here or play with other kids.”
Daniel had become a ‘loner.’ His actions and sulks made that first year back home intolerable. His mother tried everything, but I knew exactly what was wrong. I mean exactly. It frightened me. I knew about the frustration of living away from that which he loved most; the sea. It was on our doorstep, and yet it was far away.
Daniel was a boy made for leaving the land, not standing on it.
Eleven years after his birth, Daniel came home from school, emptied the contents of his penny piggy bank onto the bed, and counted out thirty-seven pounds and fourpence.
When asked by his mother why he was counting money, he announced he wanted to buy his own yacht and was leaving the ‘stupid’ island. We smiled, but we knew what we had done to him, something no parents should ever do; we had lost our child to the world at eleven years of age.
Yes, ridiculous, yes, so many young children develop powerful personalities, but we had shown him too much. He had not lived the life of a child for two years but had worked jobs that asked for real discipline and strength of character and muscle. In the next month leading up to his birthday, I agonized over my decision. Daniel would not be content sailing in the confines of the harbor, nor could we offer a round the world sailor a dinghy such as many of the teenagers used on the island.
The yacht I looked at, one I’d seen moored in the marina with a ‘for sale’ sign hung over the rail, is what every sailor should look for in a sailboat, seaworthiness; meaning that boat will take care of you when you can no longer take care of it. I had done everything I could to make Daniel understand sailing was about preparation, knowledge, and respect; being prepared at all times. Never, for a moment, lose the greatest respect for the sea. (Here is not the place to tell you what kind of preparedness I mean because this is about Daniel and not about sailing.)
He was ready; you must take my word for it as his father, as a man who loved him. I can indicate this by repeating the thing he told me when returning from his first lone sail around the island. “Dad, the rudder’s out of balance.” After an hour at sea together that same evening, I knew I’d lost my son to the same love that makes me the man I am. The rudder was indeed out of balance.
He called her Dignity
In the next year, we hardly saw Daniel, nor did his teachers. He was wonderful, but for education; algebra, history, and Latin. Daniel suffered more than most, and between eleven and twelve, Daniel was a stranger to us. I grew frustrated, anxious about him, for his single-mindedness and stubbornness together had turned him into a lone sailor and not a schoolboy.
Daniel loved me, loved what I did, loved what I taught him, and when it came time for him to teach me some things, I learned them with pride. By the time he was thirteen, he stood over six feet tall. His hands were no longer a boy’s hands.
Daniel had one weakness in his life, one undeniable weakness, and that weakness turned out to be his overriding strength. It was his mother. You might have thought she had no natural strength of her own in the way he protected her. Regardless of our fights and our voices raised and the sometimes shuddering disagreements about how to raise Daniel, he could put his arms around her, and everything became calm. She would kiss his cheek and tell him he was impossible to love when, of course, it was the least impossible thing to do. Having his arms around her, I knew, was like being encompassed in youthful strength and the beauty of love. Daniel was difficult in everything except how he loved his mother; it was serenity itself to watch them.
Daniel and I battled constantly; we rubbed shoulders at sea and stood together as men, but I regret that he hardly ever seemed the child, nor did childlike things; playing with other boys, running and climbing trees, so I never quite got it right with my son.
I was on duty in the North Sea on that fateful day. Daniel and his mother were visiting friends in Finland. On September 26th, 1994, they took the ferry from Helsinki to Tallinn, Estonia, to do some shopping and then, the following day, take the ferry to Stockholm to meet up with her family in Sweden to stay with them for a week.
They never arrived. Nor were their bodies ever recovered.
This story is not a request for sympathy or understanding. Daniel would have been holding his mother in those powerful arms when she most needed him. He was fourteen years of age, one of the best men I ever met. He lived his life daring to do whatever his calling tempted him to do.
I am fortunate, very fortunate, that such a young man now guards his mother forever. She could not be, nor ever will be, in better hands while they make their journey together.
I’m not the only man hurting in this world. I get that. I just needed to talk to someone, no one, anyone.
Thank you for allowing me.
