Dear Dad Address Unknown

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I guess you can blame a lady called @Jessicalynnt for showing me how to contact you, as she wrote a lovely article online about her letters to people who are no longer with us. It made me want to write to you. Your departure in 1977 was pretty abrupt wasn’t it? Couldn’t you at least wait four weeks until after your fiftieth birthday before dying? The first we knew was when the police arrived at the house to say you’d collapsed and died in your favourite Café bar in Manchester. The coroner said it was coronary thrombosis. Death had been as instantaneous as a bullet – a blood-clot bullet inside you, straight through the heart. You felt nothing. We got the pain. I went to the Manchester Cypriana Cafe with you sometimes, but not that Tuesday. My last memory of you was you shouting to me that it was time to get up and then closing the front door as you went out. I heard you but never saw you. We were devastated, as you can imagine. Your funeral attracted so many guests that the traffic jam you generated stopped the traffic, and made the local newspapers. Strange how few of your mourners stayed in touch with the family afterwards. I gave my sister away at her first wedding, which as you and I predicted, didn’t last long. It was daunting stepping into your role, aged sixteen. Everyone said I was the new you now, the new ‘man of the house’ with a need to look after the family. I knew my childhood died with you. I was reminded how much I look like you too. I see your face in my mirror as well as mine. You wore it better. I failed my duty of course. I retreated into a cult a few years after you left us. You would have talked me out of it I guess, and hope. The guru claimed to be a new father figure for me, but he was never really a substitute for you. I clung to your memory like a barnacle. Eventually I dragged myself out but it took four and a half years. You know Mum married your brother Frank, don’t you? It was quite legitimate about three-years after you left us. It was like Queen Gertrude marrying King Claudius in Hamlet without the murders. Frank was good to us, but Mum Henpecked him. Oh, I know you hated anyone, even me criticising Mum, but she was and still is bolshie, argumentative and manipulative. Frank caved in to her until his own slower series of heart attacks took him from us early in the 21st century. I stand up to Mum more, so we argue a lot, often bitterly. My sister fell out with me defending her son (the oldest, who you saw so briefly while he was just a month old when you departed) started stealing from me. My sister stopped her three sons and her third husband from talking to me at all. Mum does nothing to help repair the breach. They even have Christmas without me now. Mum still talks to me, though she fell out with her brother, Phil. Her gossip about him led him to refuse to have anything to do with any of the family ever again. Without you, the family has become so dysfunctional. You worked all your life. You worked too hard if anything, and that killed you – workaholism. Mum wanted things and you worked extra hours to make it happen. I spend a lot of time out of work. Your death hit my school exams so I had few qualifications. The cult years didn’t help. Much of my work has involved temping through agencies and I’ve been fired twice. I question authority too much. Would you see me as a failure? I went back to university and got a degree in literature and philosophy eventually, but its not very vocational. I’d like to think you’d be proud of that. Frank was, and for once so was Mum. My writing has a modest success. I have stories and poems in print. I am nominated for a theatre award later this year too. Mum sees that as trivial though, no better than showing her the drawings I did when I was five. I outlived you. I made it past fifty, though I’m overweight and you were looking in good shape. I still look like you a bit, but I’m not you. No one could be you. I still miss you. I even share your name, as your Dad did before us – a name that gives me great pride – Arthur. Arthur Chappell