Category: Dad | David Coveney

Staleys in the Isle of Man

One of the funny things about children and their memories is just how fallible they are. Full of false memories and forgotten realities. I lived, for a while, somewhere on the outskirts of Douglas on the Isle of Man, when I was about nine years old.

The family I stayed in had a boy about a year older than me, and a girl about a year younger. The girl was nice, if disinterested by my presence. The boy was giddy at first, but horrible if I dared beat him at anything. Within a month or so every toy I’d brought with me (and they weren’t many) was damaged in some way by him and he wasn’t great at sharing… though he didn’t always get much choice in that matter.

His parents were, I suppose, alright. Why would they have looked after me if not? The father was a Scottish oil-rig worker and absent for what seemed like an age at a time. I didn’t mind. When he was home there seemed to be a lot of porridge to eat, and they weren’t good at making porridge. Then it became An Issue when I didn’t eat it all. I remember one day being left alone with what seemed like a monstrous bowl of porridge while everyone went out. I had to finish the porridge.

The good news is that with care and running water you can wash any amount of porridge down a sink. I don’t know why I didn’t think to use the toilet instead, but I didn’t. It would certainly have been a faster way of disposing of the sticky gloop.

And I have a massive collection of memories from the place. There was a bar of soap in the shape of a blue elephant. A bar of soap which, I must add, wasn’t to be used as soap. Simply not allowed. No idea why. But the days passed. I would go to school, come home for lunch of some thin, hideous soup – often oxtail, and go back. Sometimes I’d have a sandwich to take with me. I only remember soup and porridge from the Isle of Man. I’m sure I got nice meals too. I just have zero recollection.

The funny thing about informal fostering is how risky it is. I suppose that isn’t funny at all, really. But in doing it, your parent(s) could be unwittingly exposing you to dangers. So if I spoke to strangers in the park (and I would, being that kind of child) then my Dad would make it An Issue. But being dumped on an island while Dad goes off to marry his new 19yr old wife? Yeah, no problem!

But nothing bad happened, porridge aside. Nobody molested me. Nobody beat me. Nobody really shouted at me. All the people who put me up were better at the basics of childcare than Dad, no matter how bad their soup was. No matter that mostly they were much more boring in my eyes. Because Dad, although volatile and drunk, was funny and interesting. I didn’t want to live with him, but when he was sober and happy, he was great. But it’s how you act when things aren’t going well that tends to define you. And when things went badly he was a horror and couldn’t keep things together. Hence all the informal fostering when his latest escapade had gone wrong.

What was best about this informal fostering was the new experiences. In Horwich, the landlords of the Albert Arms put me up for quite a while. They handled feeding me, discipline and keeping me relatively on the straight and narrow. I was a little feral, I suppose, but that wasn’t so unusual in 1980. They even made delicious food like fish fingers. They even bought me my first bike, a used Raleigh Chopper. Good people. Took me on holiday too. To Garstang, admittedly, but it was still a holiday and I loved it.

Back in the Isle of Man there was one memory…an experience… that really sticks with me. There was a bakery in a nearby row of shops. I’d been told by some other children that they sold “staleys” some days. Confused, they explained a staley was just yesterday’s cakes and still tasted delicious! I was reluctant at first, but a friend, the guy with the mute mother, took me in and showed me the ropes.

To a nine year old with relatively little going on in life this was… heaven. The only feeling better was the same friend whose mum handed me unused toys and board games to take home. I loved her, a little. And I loved that bakery, because if I found 2p in the nearby phone box I had a treat to look forward to. I’d run in excitedly, ask to be shown the staleys, and choose the nicest I could afford.

But it annoys me that I don’t know the name of the school I went to. Or my friend with the mute mother. Or the name of the family I stayed with. Or their grandparents who often looked after me for long, tedious weekends. Nothing. Just gone. But I remember the bakery. And I remember the broken JPS Lotus model toy that got broken by my temporary roommate. The little shit.

Image credit: CC-BY https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89clair#/media/File:Eclairs_at_Fauchon_in_Paris.jpg

Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)

I promised, ages ago, that I’d write up some tips on how to find somebody who’d gone missing in South America. Recently I had an email from somebody in the same situation which has spurred me into action.

Since 1997 I’ve found or been found by my mother, my brothers and my sister. Here I’m sharing some ideas and tips that I wish I’d known when I started.

Before I start

What I’m going to tell you may help improve your chances of finding somebody who’s missing. It may not, but I suspect it won’t hurt because these are things to add to what you would do naturally anyway. I can’t promise they’ll make any difference, but had I done them I may well have found my father before rather than after he’d died. But hindsight is always perfect. Hopefully by sharing this I can help you.

Whether finding my father would have made my life or his life any better, I don’t know. And you’ll have to think about that for your own situation. Sometimes people hide or disappear for a reason, and finding them may not help. On the other hand, they may have no idea that actually they’re still loved in spite of what’s gone before. Who knows?

I hope that if you use these tips they help you achieve what you need to achieve. It’s not easy missing a friend or a family member. It’s not easy finding them. It’s not easy reconciling what’s happened. The important thing is to be open, forgiving, and at peace with yourself when you set out. If you want them to say sorry, to be humble or to suddenly love you then you should probably not start out. If you want to show them your love and be a person in their life, even if that’s a small part of their life, then go for it. Anything else is setting yourself up for disappointment and heartbreak.

I’m going to refine this post over time. It’s not cast in stone. What you read is based on nothing more than my own personal experience and understanding. It’s not definitive. You will have your own things to add.

So let’s get searching

I’m going to break this up into a few parts to break down the problem.

1. Gather all the data

You’re going to need every address, phone number, email, photo and location possible, because that’s where you’re going to look. You can do a lot of this without leaving home, if you’re organised. Get it together. Scan or photograph everything so that you can store it somewhere off-site like Skydrive or Dropbox. These will be important documents in your search – don’t risk losing them. Don’t carry them with you on a trip. You’re going to use this data to create a one page letter and email to send out to as many people as possible.

2. Think about differences

There are key things that will differentiate the person you’re looking for compared to those in the country they’ve settled in. Language, looks, and so on. But there will also be their interests. Were they big tennis, pool, or football players? They may have taken it up in their new location. List everything that is distinctive about this person relative to where they live. I’d divide this list into culture (languages, country of origin etc), interests (sports, pastimes, hobbies), and work.

Then, tackle each one. If you’re dealing with an English speaker, perhaps they’ve tried teaching it in order to make some money? It’s a common way for travelling types to make ends meet. If they’re mad keen on pool, they probably headed off to the local pool halls. If they’re computer programmers, they may have tried to do that. This gives you targets in your search.

3. Find the matches

So, now you have a list of things about the person, and some data. Start to work out how to match things up.

For example, with my father he liked pool (and billiards and so on), gambling, drinking, watching sports, puzzles, and he spoke English and Spanish. With the data I had there were about 12 cities which he seemed to have written from and talked about. So, for English I need a list of all English schools in each of those cities. For pool, every pool and billiard hall. Gambling is trickier – but casinos can be worth checking out. For sports and drinking, think sports bars. Link things together. You have limited resources, so look at the best possibilities based on the data and knowledge you have. Did most letters come from one city?

Then there’s the most important – embassies, consulates and honorary consuls. At least, that’s what they’re called in Britain. You need to contact as many of these in your target regions as possible. The people who work at these places are often well connected within their local communities. They may not be able to facilitate directly, for confidentiality reasons (after all, not everybody wants to be found) but they can pass a message on.

4. Time to get organised!

OK, you know what you need to think about, now it’s time to get organised. I’d personally create a database or spreadsheet into which all this data can be pumped in. That means you can later run a mail merge to produce letters to each of these targets. In my naivety I only sent mail to all the embassies in South America.

5. The letter itself.

You’re going to create a letter describing the person you’re looking for, his or her names, and, most importantly, photographs. Nowadays colour printing is cheap, so scan in those old pictures and include them in the letter somewhere or on a separate sheet. If you’re on a budget, use a black and white laser printer.

So, you found them. Now what?

This is where it gets tricky. You find your missing person. Depending how that happens, you either have to initiate contact, or make friendly contact happen.

Here’s another list…

1. Don’t assume it’s really them

You get an email back. You need to meet up, perhaps, or something else… perhaps they need help? Do be careful you’re not being scammed. There are a lot of people who are hungry, poor, or plain greedy and they might just seize the chance to get some money out of you. Be wary. If you’re meeting them for the first time, ensure it’s in a safe, public and neutral place.

2. The pain

Here’s another potential issue – depending on the nature of the separation, establishing a fresh link could be incredibly painful. They could be in a relatively bad way. They could be angry about being found. They could be happy, but emotionally messed up about it all. Do not underestimate the problems here. Be prepared to be strong, to walk away if you have to. If I’d found my father and he’d tried to manipulate me like he did when I was a teenager then I don’t know for sure if I’d have coped. I’m far stronger today, but who knows? Would I regress? It’s impossible to tell.

So, make sure you have support on hand – either with you if you’re meeting in person, or on the end of a phone line.

3. And then…

Once you have re-established contact… you now have the long path. My sister and I coincidentally started to look for each other around the same time and we worked out where we both were. She approached me first, after months of deliberating about how to do it. I’d similarly been waiting for a while, and worrying.

The thing you have to remember though is that it’s not all going to be just like a normal relationship. The gaps and the different lives you’ve experienced will make things different. You won’t be visiting each other every week, or acting like brother/sister or mother/daughter for the rest of your lives – the relationship will take time and real work to make things happen. You’ll go to social events if invited. You’ll send cards and gifts. At times it could feel one sided – you may be overwhelmed, or the other person might be. All I can say is that once you know each other you can work on filling in the gaps. Don’t rush it. It’ll happen if you give it time.

The findability thing

In 1997 I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother, father, brothers or sister for years. I didn’t know where they lived, what they did, or exactly how they might look. My half-sister and my half-brother I knew the least.

In 1998 I found my mother, brother and half-brother in a remarkable half hour of work one lunchtime! I simply rang every address and phone number I could find and asked if they knew them. Within no time I was speaking to my half-brother, that evening with my mother. Problem solved.

My father… well, you can read the story here on this blog and then viewing the newer posts in that archive. There are twelve at the time of writing, you should start with the oldest.

My sister… this is where “findability” works out. I consciously made a decision around 2001 that I should be easy to find online. Since around then I’ve been the top ranking “David Coveney” on Google. But that’s not what she first searched for, because she didn’t even know she had a brother…

It works the other way – if you have a blog and you’re looking for someone with a reasonably uncommon name, create a post about them. If you searched for “Chris Coveney” then for years a post on this site about my father would come up highly in Google. It gave a chance. I thought my father might Google himself. He didn’t. But his daughter did. And as a consequence, Maria, my half-sister, found me a few years ago. Happy days!

This is what I call passive searching – you set everything up to make things as easy as possible for people to either let themselves be found, or to find you. Because maybe, and you can hope, the person you’re looking for is missing you too.

If nothing else, running a blog will let them know how you are – they may not want to contact you, but they can follow your life, your loves and your family in a public and open way. Obviously, be careful what you publish.

Get out there, look around, be prepared, and be open. Good luck, and I hope you find who you’re looking for. If you have a story to share, please do so in the comments section below.

Dad´s Headstone

Had my father’s headstone delivered and installed yesterday.

It was a fairly sombre moment, and my last goodbye to him. I won’t go back soon.

Unfortunately the computer I’m trying to upload my photos to won’t play ball, so no pictures for the moment. Sorry. Maybe tomorrow when I get to San Pedro de Atacama.

Edit – 08/07/2011: Finally added the picture, nearly a year later. Some kind of mental block for me when it comes to gravestones. Here it is. I’ve also added a gallery with images from the cemetery in general.

Quiet Weekend in Arica

I’m staying put while I wait for the headstone to be finished and fitted, and consequently got to see an Arican weekend.

There’s not a lot for me to do in many ways, so yesterday I spent some time going through all of my father’s papers and notebooks. I found evidence of one email address he’d used from five years ago, but it no longer existed. So I returned from the computer and continued… until I found painstakingly detailed notes on how to use Yahoo mail. Including a password.

Bingo!

I felt that if he had e-mail perhaps he’d been in touch with people and I could work out more of his life. I ran down to the computers they have here in the hotel, logged in and… he’d only ever emailed one place – the Department of Work and Pensions. It was all about his pension, along with a couple of emails explaining that they had his address wrong (and which they never seemed to correct!) and that was it. Nothing else, nothing in the sent folder to anyone else. It was a dead end.

Ah well. So I went back to the notes and worked out a fair few things. I’ll note what I’ve learned in full at the bottom of this post, as the whole day taught me things.

The Letters

One of my disappointments was to find no detail of any personal life, anywhere. But I did bring with me all the letters he sent me from 1988 to 1991. These covered his crisis period. I decided to get them in order, photograph each one, for posterity, and then read them one after another.

Ouch. This caused another period of getting down, because I realised some things. I remembered how, in the letters, were statements which were essentially threats to commit suicide. The incredible emotional blackmail. His feeling of injustice over what he thought was some kind of inheritence. In part that my memory hadn’t formed a perfect impression of the order of events (although I wasn’t too far out) and that his crisis had clearly been real enough, but largely because towards the end of the letters he stopped being so demanding and so hard on me. In fact, the very last letter was more about caring for me than himself. He was almost upbeat and looking to the future.

That was the moment. He’d realised what he’d done and he was trying to repair it. Problem is, he was too late. I was still upset at him, and I’d now rejected him completely. At the time I couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done. The letter is in quite a sorry state as I’d crumpled it up ready for the bin, but interestingly it looks like I changed my mind, flattened it out and put it with the rest.

And so I found myself wondering. Should I have forgiven him sooner? I’d certainly have stood far more of a chance of finding him, and maybe he’d learned. But at the same time I do believe I was still scared of him. I never told him I’d moved, and I never checked again with the neighbour who’d been taking my post in.

I think, to me (and maybe to others) that this is a valuable lesson in the dangers of losing the trust of those closest to you. If you want to get it back a letter isn’t enough. You have to earn it. Really work at it. He could have forged the connections once more, the stupid bugger, but he couldn’t stop me walking away. My own instability at the time meant he had no chance of finding out where I lived…certainly not from South America.

It’s also taught me that communication is everything. Sometimes those around you know little about what you do and what you think. For example, he didn’t really understand the repossession of my grandmother’s house or the intense solitude I felt at the time.

Maybe if I’d simply told him? But I needed to protect myself as well.

I did originally plan to place the letters online in their entirety, but that will have to wait. I saw some things there that could cause real issues for some people and which need to be cleared first. Maybe in the future. But it’s a thin maybe.

More Friends

arica-trip-and-more 162 (Medium) — Rafael, Joaquin, slightly mental chewing gum seller.

At 9pm, after the terror pizza, I headed to the pool hall to meet more of my father’s friends and acquaintances. There was Oliver (or Oscar, my notes aren’t clear on this and I need to check tomorrow) who met him over ten years ago on the La Paz-Arica train. Or Pablo, who’d known him since 1991… from the time of that last letter.

Obviously I had questions. I asked if he’d mentioned family and they only had one mention… a daughter, in Quito, Ecuador, who died in a road traffic accident at the age of about 13. But I couldn’t find any more detail than that. No names, no known addresses, and there’d been nothing in the notes. Back home we suspect he may have been using this as a way of blocking conversation about family, but who can be sure? He gave the story consistently, everyone reported it as the same, but something occurs to me… it’s an old story. If he was reporting this 19 years or so ago, then the age wouldn’t be possible as I’m not aware of him having been to South America prior to around 1983.

So, after all this, and without the help of an interpreter, I only had vague echos of the man. Nothing so firm other than that he was, it seems, generous with friends, selective about his company, and a creature of habit. I sat where he sat, chatted with his friends, enjoyed a beer, and learned to spell ‘jote’, the red wine and Coke mix, correctly.

This all cheered me up. Apart from the odd mentalist (my father did hang around with a diverse group) I found that these friends he had were pleasant, intelligent people with things to share. We drank to my father, I tried to explain the story in as sensitive way as possible, and we laughed and joked.

Food!

Oh seriously, sometimes, when you travel the food is amazing. Sometimes, it looks like it might be a danger to your health…

No, I ordered a veggie pizza, not some sort of mentalist giant cheese flan.

Argh! It’s vomiting salad at me!

Father’s health was seriously affected by malnourishment. Maybe he was just scared of the food here?

[playht_player width="100%" height="90px" voice="Noah"]

The Story of Juanito

Here’s something… a smiling, happy and charming man who knew my father in Arica, lives just around the corner from the hotel I’m staying at.

He actually lives in the cabin that guards a car park. Just him. He’s been married twice, I believe, but that’s all I know.

So how can I tell his story?

I can’t, not really.

But it made me realise – he had many things in common with my father. Two marriages, keeps quiet about his personal life, and a very modest lifestyle. And truth is, I see people like this all the time. And they all have a story. It’s just that it is, largely, untold.

Even when it is told, you only have their take on it. Given how fragile memories and emotions can be it’s almost impossible to extricate what’s really happened.

Pushing Away

I think it’s entirely possible that anybody can end up alone and relatively marginal. Worse, some can even end up utterly destitute and on the streets. Something makes this happen to people. They destroy their personal relationships. Before too long, they are relatively alone. They have friends, for sure, but not close ones. And drinking friends, as we all know, are the ones who aren’t there when you need them.

If we look at my father, he ended up being rejected by me. If you look at the picture of me with my father, you’ll see something that I’d never noticed until a psychologist here noticed it and mentioned it to Joaquin… my father is touching me, but I’m distant. I could be just another surly teenager, but here’s the thing… I wasn’t a surly teenager. I just hand’t formed many attachments.

arica-trip-and-more 159 (Medium) — At the pool hall

There were two points when I pushed away from my father. When I was around 11 years old he’d split up with his second wife and I was living with my grandmother. I’d struggled to settle into the new school – a rather rough school that was failing its pupils, and the bullying and harrassment had become quite extreme. Yet some level of that had happened at every new school. So I stood firm and when my father suggested I went with him to Belgium I opted not to. Enough was enough.

Wasn’t easy.

That was the first stage. He was obviously angry with his mother who supported me in the process of requesting her to be my guardian, and consequently their relationship deteriorated even further.

He’d already pushed away from his second wife and daughter, simply by failing to cope with certain aspects of the relationship.

Then, years later, when he was demanding money from me, I couldn’t handle it. He was too hard on me. I had to reject him even more. Not so easy, really.

Suddenly, he’d lost all familial contact. Nobody wanted to deal with him or support him. He was a lost soul.

We Judge on the Negative

One thing I’ve realised is that most people form relationships with other people based on the good character traits. They find the other person attractive, or intelligent, or caring… that kind of thing. But they break relationships based on the bad. That may be stating the obvious, really, but it’s important because the bad things are usually a very small part of that person’s character.

Think about it – your average burglar probably spends no more than a few hours a week breaking into house. A wife beater doesn’t beat his wife every day. It just doesn’t happen that way. It’s why sometimes women find it so hard to break away because “he’s a good father” or “he’s so generous most of the time.”

People aren’t black and white, no matter what films and the media appear to suggest. My father wasn’t generally a bad man. Remove the mood swings and the occassional domestic violence and you had a charming, intelligent and thoughtful man. Everyone I’ve met here considered him a good man. If anything, they found him a little naive – he got ripped off and let down on a number of occassions because he trusted too much.

He wasn’t evil.

He just had flaws that made him impossible to live with.

And Juanito?

I know I made the title of this post misleading, but it’s relevant. I don’t know his story. I can’t even suggest that he was pushed away from his family. All I know is that he’s living alone, in a small hut in a car park, and that he’s a personable and kind man.

All I know for sure is that there is a story in everybody, and no matter what mistakes they or others made they’ll feel the pain of their past.

What Have I Learned?

Value your friendships and relationships. As far as I can see, they’re one of the primary things that keep us from ending up alone and in poverty like my father did. It’s important to accept that although they can be a pain sometimes, and oh so restrictive, we need those boundaries and checks that they bring to us. Being told you’re wrong, or being stupid, or hurtful… that’s something we all need to hear now and again because we can all be wrong, stupid or hurtful.

Without that, we can’t limit ourselves, and we can’t free ourselves from our mental barriers. It’s often said that children need boundaries, or they can become insecure. I believe, very much, that adults need them also.

Now, I must apologies for the random keyboard psychology above, and promise that normal service will be resumed soon!

Arrangements, part dos

Anyone who’s experienced the death of someone close to them will know that there is often a lot to do. No exceptions here, plus the added pressure of limited time. However, I’m not entirely unhappy about the time thing… makes me get things done.

Cementaria Parque de Arica

So, following the funeral I went yesterday to the cemetary to finish off the paper work. The tomb is owned in perpetuity by me, although a typical arrangement, that may seem strange in Europe, is to simply rent a tomb for a number of years. Once that time is up the coffin is disinterred and transferred to a shared grave. I also had to sort out maintenance again, in perpetuity. It’s not a lot each year, but with no easy way of paying fifteen pounds to an account in Chile every now and then I had no option.

I actually saw this happening on my second visit. You could see a clearly subdued couple watching as the coffin was lifted from a tomb, cleaned up, sealed in plastic, then loaded onto a hearse. It was a sad sight.

And it’s all made slightly bizarre by the music that’s piped into the cemetary. If you have a funeral it does seem to be suitably sombre, but at all other times they appear to often play cheerful music for the workers to enjoy.

arica-trip-and-more 069 (Medium) — Piping out the tunes

It’s tricky feeling sombre and respectful when you can hear an Abba song.

Still, at father’s tomb it wasn’t so audible.

I took some photos, walked around, paid my respects, and headed back to town for a meeting with the reverend David Hucker who carried out the bilingual service. He’s clearly a nice man, and initially refused my attempt to pay for the service. It had to be turned into a donation to his church before he’d accept. Given the service included a singer, I was amazed. The kindness of people here doesn’t cease to amaze me. We chatted about why he and his wife came here, my own background and so on. All very pleasant.

Headstones

I felt like I’d taken enough of Joaquin’s time so I decided I’d make the effort to arrange the headstone entirely on my own. With limited Spanish and nothing more than a vague idea of where a stonemason may be, I set off.

Now, this is where you have to admire the Chilean desire for efficiency. The hospital is at one end of a road approximately 1km long. At the other, lies the municipal cemetary (not the one Chris is in). Along this road are numerous funeral directors and various parked hearses, ranging from custom made examples to tired looking old American station wagons. Given this is one of the more important routes to the hospital, I can’t help wonder if it helps reassure incoming patients. Still, it’s efficient.

After some aimless wandering I spotted a suitable stone mason, went inside, and did my best. On Monday morning I’m either getting exactly what I wanted, or a very rough approximation with some crazy typeface. Let’s see. Again, Chilean flexibility and a can-do attitude helped. I explained I wasn’t likely to be around for much longer and that I couldn’t wait the usual week. He made it happen.

The House

arica-trip-and-more 118 (Medium) — It was very dark when I took this picture of the house Chris lived in.

The next job of the day was to visit the house where my father lived. He’d rented a room here for over ten years.

I had a real shock when the first item brought in was his suitcase. It’s the only recognisable item I saw in his belongings – the same cream coloured Samsonite suitcase he’d used throughout much of the eighties. It was a touch battered, but it even still carried a sticker for a hotel in Sluis in the Netherlands (a small, sleepy town once notorious for having the highest density of sex shops in the world) at which I remember him buying me waffles with cream and strawberries each time we visited on his tours.

From there on in it went a little downhill. There was no wallet, no photo album, no sign of his early past in South America. Apart from a couple of postcards from his days in Belgium(!) and his passports going back to the mid-eighties there was nothing. None of my letters to him were there, nor any photos of me or any of his children. I still have to visit another place where he apparently kept some stuff, but mostly I believe they were just things he sold on the market where had a small spot.

arica-trip-and-more 126 (Medium) — The old suitcase

So what did I find out about him?

Looking at his passports he travelled an awful lot up until around 2006 when he broke his hip-bone in a fall during a tussle of some sort. He’d been trading in clothes and, for a while, also appeared to be running some sort of homeopathy service. He was buying significant quantities of remedies from a german supplier in South America whose exact location I’ll be working out shortly. He had three books in his belongings, two of which were on homeopathy, with the other being an encyclopaedia.

The rest was mostly junk. Old lottery tickets, some snacks he sold, a collection of out of date milk cartons, old clothes (though mostly in good condition – looks like he still preferred to be smart!) and a lot of random notes. No notes, however, spoke of feelings, interestingly. There was no journal, no address book even. Just accounts of his work, routes he was taking and so on.

arica-trip-and-more 128 (Medium) — To a twelve year old, this hotel did the best waffles in the world. Ever.

There weren’t any signs of written correspondence with friends anywhere. I did, however, find a printout with what would appear to have been an e-mail address. So I now know that at least sometimes he went online. Maybe he did find me after all but opted to keep quiet? Who knows.

The house itself was relatively clean, with the downstairs occupied by the landlady and her son, and upstairs by various lodgers. But my father didn’t really spend much time there – as had been the case when I knew him, he preferred to be out at bars or selling at the market, using his modest room as merely a place to sleep at night and to store a few things.

And that’s really it, so far. There’s little more evidence.

The Wake

After this it was off to the bars where my father liked to hang out. He had a few acquaintances and friends there. People he would drink and play billiards with whilst arguing about sports, politics and any other subject that caught his attention. It’s fair to say he hadn’t changed much, in many ways.

arica-trip-and-more 137 (Medium) — Myself, Rafael, and a guy whose name is evading me right now. I’m drinking pancho.

So we’d agreed to meet up at the pool hall and have a few drinks and a game of billiards (or pool or whatever it’s called) in his honour.

It was fascinating to sit in the places my father sat, and play the tables he’d have played at. I didn’t get somber. In fact it reminded me that his life, whilst poor, wasn’t terrible. He had friends, and he had things to enjoy. That’s a big part of what we all need. So we drank a little, and I learned the favoured drinks of his friends – one called pancho, which is basically beer and Fanta mixed together, and another called hota which is a mix of wine and, believe it or not, Coca-Cola. Yes, I was surprised by that one too!

Later, as I tried to encourage one particular drunk friend of my father’s to NOT play with my camera, Joaquin told me he’d a call for his mariachi band to play a serenade. “Would you like to come,” he asked.

How could I refuse?

arica-trip-and-more 149 (Medium) — The bar and stools where he often sat

About two hours later I concluded that Chilenos are, essentially, completely mental. But in a nice way :o) They arrive, in their slightly too small costumes, from different directions at the specified address. And they must keep quiet outside and not be discovered. Because nobody expects the mariachi.

At the allotted moment they all pile into the house and the singing starts. The lady whose 50th birthday it was seemed bemused at first, but appeared to enjoy. Her husband, however, was a strong, surly type who looked like someone who made a living from ripping lorry tyres from their rims with his bare hands.

Still, he didn’t kill any of us so I gues it was OK for him.

And then it was off for a burger. I was granted my wish of a vegetarian sandwich, which turned out to be a chip sandwich with salad and avocado in it that tasted suspiciously meaty (cooked on the same griddle, no doubt)… but I had to chuckle at many of them ordering nothing more exciting than a cup of tea with their meal. Which was, of course, served in china, with a saucer. Don’t see that much in English burger bars at 2am in the morning…

arica-trip-and-more 233 (Medium) — A burger and a nice cup of tea at the end of a night out.

It’s now Saturday here and I’ll admit to a slightly lazy day. I got up late, wandered around town, had yet another terrible breakfast (they’re better in Peru, I have to say) and generally felt slightly subdued. The day before had been quite happy, really, and now it was simply about going back to normal. I have no tasks left until Monday, and attempts to find options such as teaching people how to create websites have failed to elicit much interest.

So I’ll go through the small bag of items I took from my father’s place, take some notes, and generally meander today. Don’t expect an exciting post tomorrow! I also have to decide what to do next. I still have two weeks to use up, but no clear leads in other countries. I suspect once I’m finished here it might just be time for a bit of a holiday. I just need to decide – relaxed, or exploratory? Any thoughts?

The Funeral

And so it came. In a way it’s weird… I always felt there were only two likely things to happen.

First, I would find my father (or he would find me) and a period of reconciliation may take place. Closeness, perhaps never, but reconciliation would be fine.

Second, I would never find him, and that would be that. Finito.

I’d actually come to the conclusion a few years ago that maybe he’d died some time ago. In some ways it was an easier conclusion… it stopped me feeling guilty for not continuing a search or trying harder.

I don’t think I was ever ready for this. And this morning I woke up very early at around 5am. Partly because I went to bed very early, but also because my mind was spinning. I decided to put some music on. And this piece came up:

And I took a moment to try and remember what was really good about my father. I’ve told the story that shows the negative in him. The curious thing is that our negative moments in life tend to be far fewer in occassion than our positives, yet they often define us.

So I remembered:

Football in the garden when I was very young.
Him teaching me pinball – and his pride when I started to beat him, and most people, from the age of about five. I still love pinball and if I ever have the space, I’ll have one!
Going to watch Liverpool play at Anfield on several occassions.
Learning about different cultures through him, that there was more to the world than the area(s) I was growing up in.
When I was 16 I met a girl in Oostende and, late in the evening, him quietly handing me enough money to take her clubbing. He then made his excuses and dragged away others to give us space. He continued in this vein all week. It was just a holiday romance, but hey…

There was more… but those are what sprung to mind. And I had my first ‘moment’ there in bed at about 6am this morning.

The next came during the funeral. But first, a little about Chilean funerals…

Culture Shift

Chile doesn’t feel wildly different to Spain, in so many ways. The climate, the landscape even… at least, when I compare it to Alicante where my family lives. Culturally it’s similar enough that you expect things to be reasonably similar. And I suppose they are. But that’s still quite different to Britain.

First things first, you arrive at the hospital with all your paperwork a little before the funeral directors come to collect the body. In our case we then had an hour or so of waiting before heading to the cemetary. I’ve already mentioned that instead of burial plots, niches are used.

And in our case, as there were only two of us at the undertakers we could ride in the hearse, up front. I was disappointed, in a way, as the hearse was simply a silver Ford Taurus Estate. With BMW hubcaps. As a car geek I was disappointed! But then in the UK we use Fords for hearses as well, so I can’t complain… but I’d still prefer to head off in a Daimler, if anyone’s listening….

In the back was the coffin, wrapped in the skin of Bungle.

I realised that if we had an accident (not entirely unlikely) the coffin was unrestrained. It would be… messy, to say the least. Still, we made it to the cemetary where I met the kindly David Hucker from the Anglican Church, his wife, a singer he’d brought along, my father’s landlady, and several of his friends.

Given that funerals tend to be arranged very quickly here, and that he had no family at all here, it was a good turnout.

We then slowly walked behind the car to the tomb, where two rows of plastic garden chairs were laid out. The Bungle-Coffin was then placed on a support, and the car left. Nearby a bell tolled.

Rev. Hucker gave a simple ceremony in both English and Spanish with accompaniment and song from the delightful guitarist. And then the moment I was completely unprepared for. Everyone who knew my father stood up to say a few words of remembrance. When it came to my turn, I fell apart. I didn’t even start talking, just sobbed.

It’s so unlike me. A few tears, sure. But sobbing? Proper, wobbly belly, heaving chest sobbing? Nope, not since I was a little kid.

Every time I remembered the good parts of my father, I went again. More than in the morning which was a single burst of tears.

After a few minutes and a few tissues I managed to compose myself to string together a barely articulate sentence. It would have to do, or I’d just be off again. I patted the Bungle-Coffin, sat down, and the ceremony was then brought to a close.

Of course, the English bits didn’t make sense, entirely, in the context, but they were familiar, which helped, I think.

Then the next new part – the coffin was then pushed into the tomb, and we got to watch the workers carefully seal it up. The flowers were then placed in front of the stone, and we took turns to quietly pay our last respects.

My thoughts have also drifted to my brother and half-sister back in Europe. The five grandchildren my father never even knew about, and the joy he missed out on with all of them.

One day I’ll explain this whole story to my new born son (and any others) and maybe I’ll be back in Arica once more.

And when we come back, I’ll give Joaquin Alvarez, the British Honorary Consul, a call. He has been amazing, taking a lot of time and trouble to help me with arrangements. He came to the funeral with us as a friend of my father’s, and has touched me with his kindness and generosity of spirit. A true giant amongst men.

Arica – Day 1 – Arrangements

Phew… so what a day. It started off with a cold shower and a blandly unsatisfying breakfast of a cheese sandwich, juice and tea. But whilst eating a man came up to me and introduced himself as Joaquin Alvarez… the Honorary British Consul in Arica! It was an unexpected surprise… I thought I was meeting him later in the day.

Sadly it was just a few minutes as he teaches English in the mornings. But one thing I have to remark upon is that he immediately expressed astonishment at how similar I looked, sounded and behaved like my father. He had been a friend of my father’s for years, not knowing of any family, and to see a similar, younger version standing in front of him. It was a shock to him.

Later, we met properly, and we talked. I’d brought him some union jacks and tea as a thank you for his help so far. I didn’t expect the help he was about to give.

First the formalities… he showed me the paperwork he had, and my father’s passport. This was the moment when I’d see what my father looked like recently. In the picture was a tired man looking older than his 60 years. But it was definitely him. I will take a picture and add it to this post later.

Joaquin then took me to the hospital to discuss the matter of the hospital fees. My father had been in the intensive care unit, and these had added up. The positions were argued as so:

From the perspective of the hospital, a fee would be necessary in order to secure my father’s body and to help pay their costs.

From the perspective of the consul, many Bolivians and other illegal immigrants die in the hospital and there is never any money to pay for their care.

From the perspective of the social worker, if I was rich enough, and cared enough, to travel halfway round the world then I could surely afford to pay the fees.

The discussion went on. As you may have seen in my earlier post, I had a particular position I planned on setting out. In the end, we came to an agreement… I would pay half, and there would be an unofficial agreement that should I have more money in the future I could make a donation to the hospital.

This seemed to satisfy everyone enough to make progress.

The next stage was finding an undertaker, and to choose the coffin. Now that was odd. I discovered a few cultural things:

Hearses here are white, and often just large American estate cars.
In the UK a basic coffin is a pine wood thing in what we consider to be a classic coffin shape. In Chile it’s the same shape as typical US coffins… but covered in fake fur. I’m still trying to work out how that’s cheaper than a layer of varnish, but it is.
There isn’t necessarily a church service… it’s just straight from hospital to cemetary.
Most funerals tend to take place within 24hrs of death. Over a month is extremely unusual.
Cremation is rare and therefore a very expensive option.

Once a coffin of suitable size for a six footer (people here are short) had been found we were off to the cemetary. I had to settle for a sort of beige fur, incidentally, so my father looks like he’s being interred in a poorly cut Bungle costume.

And the cemetary was a real eye-opener. You can’t bury people when your town is built on rock. So instead, it’s simpler to build what look a little like mini concrete apartment blocks into which the coffins are inserted. See the picture above right. The cemetary is also surprisingly brightly coloured. In due course I will take pictures… it’s a fascinating difference in the way death is treated here.

And you know what amazed me most today? The effort put in by Joaquin, the consul. He spent six hours with me, going backwards and forwards between the hospital, banks and funeral parlours. He made a string of phone calls, and helped me way beyond the call of duty. Truly, a great man. I’m lucky, really.

Arica – Day 1

For no obvious reason I’ve woken up really early today. Maybe it’s something to do with the herd of elephants that evidently checked in around 1am. Or the, ahem, charmingly rustic plumbing that means the noise levels in here pick up markedly as the hotel awakes.

But it’s not a bad hotel, the Hotel Amaru, and cheap for Chile at $25 a night. So I’m not really complaining.

Anyway, today is the day when I get to start the process of discovering what my father was up to before his death. What am I going to learn? I also have to start negotiations with the hospital over the release of his body. They want approximately £1200 for his treatment.

Maybe I’ll Walk

Here’s the thing… I’ve come to try and do the right thing, and also to fulfil my need to understand my father better. It’s largely an emotional response. But I have no desire to take responsibility for him either. He failed to act responsibly around his children, after all. And this where he and I differ. I have a beautiful 3 month old baby. I would much prefer the money I’ve got to be spent on him than on a dead person. The practical, business minded side of me understands clearly the difference in return related to where the money goes…and I like to maximise my returns. I need to be prepared to be play, in the wonderful words of Paul Ockenden, Dead Dad Poker.

So I will make an offer to the hospital of a donation. It will then be up to them as to whether or not they accept my terms. If they won’t, I’ve decided that my best option is to be prepared to walk away. They’ll even save me more money as I won’t be faced with the cost of a funeral – he will receive a pauper’s funeral paid for by the state.

I won’t feel good about this. Chile is a poorer country than ours and would rather not have to pay for the care of illegal immigrants. But I don’t make masses of money, in spite of what some people think, and the cost of this trip along with the funeral are not insignificant for me.

So, let’s see what happens. This morning I will meet with the wonderful British Honorary Consulate here, Joaquin Alvarez, and start the process and the learning.

Coincidences and Denial

A few things I’ve learned:

The consulate was an acquaintance of my father’s and they drank at the same bar.
My father denied having any family but told people he had a daughter who was killed at 13 in a road accident. This may simply have been a way for him to avoid a subject painful for him to discuss, or a part truth.
He lived in relative poverty and had not been looking after himself well.
Everybody here believed my father to be Spanish. It was only when he died that the truth was revealed.
He made some money selling sweets at the market.
He could have found me easily. I couldn´t know for sure that a search here on Google would find me, but no, my name comes up top, as does his own. Perhaps he knew of my website and the page I posted about him years ago? Perhaps, even, he tried contacting me through it and the message got lost in the ether. Who knows?

So a bit to digest there. Now for me to get up and have my daily battle with South American plumbing. Will I get a hot shower? A cold one? Or a randomly shifting combination of freezing and scalding?