Two people meet. They decide to live together and grow old together. Let’s ignore whether they are a man and a woman, or gay, or two brothers without any other relationships. Doesn’t matter. What does matter is that they’re not married.
Together, these two people set up home back in 1970 in a house for which they paid £8000. Thing is, one was quite poor, really, so the other bought the house from his own funds and it remained his.
Both are now elderly, and the one owning the house sadly passes away.
If they’re married or in a civil partnership, everything that the deceased partner owns passes (unless otherwise willed) to the living partner. But in any other relationship this doesn’t happen. That house is now worth £500,000 – to the pair it’s still the same humble house they bought in a part of London that’s become quite trendy lately. But that doesn’t matter – everything to be inherited over £325,000 is taxed at 40%. So, you have a tax bill of £70,000. The inheritee may not have the money to pay that bill so is left with the problem of selling the house, or borrowing against it, in order to pay the bill. And that’s where the trouble starts. Imagine having to pay £450 a month to continue living in the house you lived in for the past 40 years?
Even worse, when that poor person dies, their estate will *also* be taxed at 40%. This compares to the married couple’s non-taxable estate which is effectively £650,000.
And it doesn’t end there. Pension funds often can’t be transferred to anybody other than a spouse. Family health insurance (particularly relevant in the US) often doesn’t cover anybody not in a legally recognised relationship. And so on and so forth. If there are married people’s tax allowances, they apply too.
So Why Be Against Gay Marriage?
I’m always fascinated by motives. It’s quite clear why a government would be against gay marriage, or even against making it really easy to marry or divorce – in doing so they get more tax. That’s simple then. From a purely fiscal point of view, governments get more tax from two single people than two married people.
And we have the religious lot – right now we have a dolt like Cardinal Keith O’Brien calling plans for gay marriage something that would “shame the United Kingdom in the eyes of the world”. I mean really? Why would that be? OK, there are states in this world where gay people are killed for it. I guess we would look pretty shameful to them. Do I care? Not really – we’re strong enough to let people live their lives how they wish to.
So the religious folk are worried. In part I know why – right there in Genesis (so believed by many Christians, Jews and Muslims as being important) is an instruction “And you, be you fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” It’s translated in lots of other ways too. But the key message there is that you should go out and reproduce.
Which makes sense. If your religion can outbreed another, it can do very well. And you know something I’ve noticed about gay folk? They don’t have many children! Of course, many do. And it would seem that their children may even fare better than their peers.
So Are Anti-Gay Marriage Campaigners Being Rational?
Nope, it’s unlikely that rationality comes into it. So let’s simply say this – they’re doing what most people do – look after their own interests first, then worry about the next level down because that can affect them too.
The joyous thing right now is that in the UK the mainstream political parties are pretty liberal about all this. They know that happy people work harder and make more money, which means more tax money, which means more power for them. The churches are no longer so relevant.
But in the US it’s a more dangerous situation – the significant Christian right can be an illiberal bunch, and the leading Republican candidates to run for president have come out with some deeply concerning statements.
In the UK we’re setting an example to the world. Let’s mock Cardinal Keith O’Brien and his antiquated beliefs – he’s not relevant any more, and let’s keep it that way. And if you hear somebody repeating anti-gay-marriage rhetoric then point out to them why somebody would object and why it’s so hard on gay couples.
Just about to start packing for San Pedro de Atacama.
I’ve been there before, so it’s a relatively familiar spot, though I didn’t spend long in the town. So this time I’m going to explore the locality a little more. I’m even thinking of sticking with it for a week or so and treating as a relaxing holiday, with a trip planned to Salar de Uyuni for a few days (if I can find one) as well as other shorter jollies.
I had been thinking of heading to La Paz, but I’ve been warned that Bolivia’s a bit of an unstable place right now and, just two weeks ago, a group of travellers were stranded in Uyuni for 19 days due to a blockade by local protesters.
As a consequence, I feel that I may be better off not spending more time than strictly necessary in the country. Although I’ll miss out on La Paz and some other sights I’d rather make sure I can get home in a timely manner and without stress or hassles.
Anyway, one highlight is that because this is an El Niño winter it has rained in parts of the desert and that means the chance of seeing a so-called ‘blooming desert’ when all the flowers come out.
If that’s the case I could be returning for a day or so to Arica. This isn’t a bad thing as one piece in my father’s puzzle still needs to be researched, and I will be able to attend to that on my return. It’s not a big thing, but something I’d like to do if possible.
Then it will be on to Lima for a night or two depending on flights, and home. Can’t wait to get back to the family, to be honest, and it’s just 12 days away now!
So, tonight, after another little spell at the English Institute giving students some practice, I’ll hop on a bus for a twelve hour ride to San Pedro. Of course, this brings up people saying that I’m a hard core traveller. But really, this is what you probably think I’m riding on http://www.contemporarynomad.com/2008/09/ whereas the reality is that I’ll have a semi-cama seat as shown here: http://www.turbus.cl/servicios.html and riding in a modern, well maintained coach. It’s not so bad!
I struggled to find somewhere to eat this evening, and in the end decided that some more bad food would have to do. I have at least found a source of decent fruit at the market, so I’m getting vitamins and fibre now. Woo!
The smells of Telepizza were calling me in, and I succumbed. I went in. I watched them making a pizza… and lo, it looked like pizza! And verily, I ordered.
While I was waiting for it to be made I sat down and combined reading and watching a telethon for Un Techo Para Chile which has been fundraising like mad lately around here. I’d thrown a few coins into a collection box without really knowing what it was about.
A wino kept wandering in and out, watching the TV for a bit, and then ambling out. He’d just stand there, near the door. I studiously avoiding catching his gaze.
The program then showed a short film about a young family moving from what was essentially a corrugated board shack into a newly built, if somewhat spartan, apartment. That’s when I heard the blubbing. I looked and saw the wino, just standing there, mouth turned down, tears streaming down his cheeks, and blubbing like a three year old that’s been denied another sweet.
It was heartbraking.
If you have a moment, consider making a small donation by following the link above. Since the strong earthquake recently a lot of families and individuals here have lost their homes. Others are just living in absolute poverty. They need your help, and once they have decent living conditions they can do more with their lives, educate their children better, and bring themselves a better future.
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.
Page one of the last letter.Page two of the last letter.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
Chilean cemetery by rob-sinclair, flickr, cc-sa
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.
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?
I’ve started writing this post in Amsterdam airport…I’m on my way to Arica in Chile where I’ll be (hopefully) burying my father, Chris, who died on the 19th of July. I say hopefully not because this is something I’m looking forward to but because I face a number of legal and monetary issues with the hospital where he died.
So, the backstory….
Chris Coveney in 1986
My father was born in 1944in Liverpool. He had a childhood disrupted by his father’s death while he and his mother were travelling to join him in post-war Frankfurt. At the age of 4 (I believe – this needs checking) it seems that this had a somewhat traumatic effect on his life. Whether it would have worked out any differently if his father hadn’t died so young is hard to know. It seems he never really bonded with his rather quiet and gentle stepfather, John.
John was one of those people that sadly get little praise in life…he didn’t have a rapier wit, good looks or intense charm. His predecessor, it seems, did. But he did do his best to provide a stable and comfortable environment for my father and grandmother (I later lived with them at different times of my life.)
Yet it seems that my father inherited his father’s flaws (a taste for women, good times and risk taking) without some key strengths (a disciplined and intellectually rigorous upgringing in particular) that would have helped my father excel. He was certainly charming, good looking and intelligent.
Family Life
My father, to the best of my knowledge, had three children… myself first, David, in 1969, Miguel two years later, to his first wife Ruth, and Maria in 1981 to his second wife Ann.
It’s fair to say that neither marriage went well. To paraphrase my mother:
He was a drinker with a vicious temper and a long arm. He couldn’t understand the word no.
There are other things I’ve learned recently which I won’t share…but the picture was of a man who couldn’t take his responsibilities seriously and, when confronted, would lash out at anyone around.
The Consequences
I’m going to skip forward now to 1985… by this point my father had been divorced twice and no longer had custody of any of his children. He’d kept me close for years, but even I tired of his temper, his constantly failing relationships and the occassional humiliation of a beating. It’s a curious thing about being smacked around by your father…the physical pain is nothing. It’s the betrayal of trust that hurts and damages you. No parent should resort to violence when faced with the annoyances of raising a child. Nor, of course, should a child ever survey a trashed kitchen following violence between their parents. Ever. I could go into the reasons why violence breaks out in domestic settings, but that subject deserves better than I can give right here.
Since 1971 my father had been working his summers as a tour guide in Oostende, Belgium. This suited him fine…a steady stream of giddy girls on holiday, few responsibilities, and plenty of nights out left him, it seems, relatively contented.
South America
By this point my father, always a keen lover of all things Spanish, had started to spend his winters in South America where he could travel around enjoying himself whilst maximising the money he earned in his Belgian summers.
This was actually a fairly calm period… I lived with my grandmother and rarely saw him. Generally I did enjoy his company, but there was always a nervousness over when he might kick off but, in general, he seemed to have mellowed.
Unfortunately, in 1987, everything changed again. I was living with my grandmother and had done reasonably well in my A levels. I’d gained a job at ICI on a trainee developer program. For me, at least the future looked good. However, like all good things in my life there always seemed to be trouble waiting for me.
Loss
Just a couple of weeks into my new job, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her decline hadn’t been pleasant to experience and before she was diagnosed she’d been struggling with shoulder pain that left her crying until the doctor could come and give her a shot of painkillers. Eventually it became too much for both of us. She was booked into hospital in a few weeks time… but that was too far away. I learned then a painful but valuable lesson.
The doctor could do nothing to have her admitted more quickly. I visited the hospital. No, they could do nothing either…it was a non urgent case of painful arthritis. Yet it was all too much to bear…I was in tears when a male nurse took me to one side and explained something…
They’re letting you look after her. She’s dependent on you. You want to know how to get her into hospital quickly? Refuse. Just tell the doctor you’ve had too much and you’re moving out.
Basically, I was going to have to play poker with my granny. But I went straight from the hospital to the doctor’s surgery and insisted I saw him. Three hours later, an ambulance arrived.
The next day they discovered the pain was caused by secondary metastasis (I think that’s the correct term, I’m writing this on a plane). She had advanced lung cancer that had spread through her body. She had less than a week left.
There was a dull, hollow ache inside me. I wasn’t close to my mother since I’d not lived with her for 14 years and besides, her and her new family had moved to Spain two years earlier – something that at the time had left me less than impressed.
I had my friends, Linda and Peter especially who were wonderfully understanding. And that weekend, my father’s summer job finished and he was able to arrive.
So he signed over everything. It was down to me to deal with the estate. There wasn’t much there, to be honest, and a lot of debt.
My father had his tickets for South America booked a long time earlier…in this time air travel was still relatively expensive and inflexible. I later learned that airlines usually aren’t so bad in cases of bereavement. I think he could have changed flights.
But he didn’t and just a few days later he was gone. Two days after that I buried my grandmother.
What’s crazy is that in all this I even managed to redecorate the lounge in time for the funeral, thanks to my friend Linda. It was important that in death everyone saw the best in my grandmother…
Losing Trust in Everyone
Soon after the vultures were circling…I couldn’t take over the mortgage or I’d have to pay off all debts, and I couldn’t get a new mortgage at such a young age and such little credit history…especially on a shared ownership house like this.
You see, what happens with a debt secured on property is that you hand over all rights to the lender. If you fail to keep up repayments the lender can take possession. The lender will then sell it. If a profit happens to be made then that’s great for the lender. They keep the money.
In fact, some even have a policy of quick repossessions during a buoyant market.
In retrospect I believe I was badly advised. But lacking support just trying to hold down a job and simply live right was enough to occupy me. When I was evicted from the house I lost my faith in society, my parents (sorry Mum…but you later won it back, so that’s ok, trust me) and everyone except my friends.
The council couldn’t help – I was told a single male would be at the bottom of the waiting list for social housing.
I didn’t want my fathers’s help and, by the dubious measure of taking out a loan to pay the deposit on a tiny studio flat, I had a place to live. While this was happening my father was made redundant from his summer job and announced he was going to stay in South America.
Having discovered financial wizardry I even managed to buy myself a niceish car I couldn’t afford on credit. Life had been hard, but now, I felt, it was improving.
Two months later I received a letter from my father asking for help – he said he’d been robbed of all his money and needed the money I owed him (I think he believed there was money in his mother’s estate) and could I send £1500 as soon as possible.
I had about £30 in the bank.
The next six months were hell as I sent over dribs and drabs in response to his increasingly strident letters, but I remember one triumphant moment. I’d been caught at work calling the Chilean embassy. I was in trouble until the reasons were explained to a senior manager. He put me in touch with the right people and before I knew it the Foreign Office offered a loan to help repatriate my father.
I’d done it. He was going to be ok. I’d sent as much as possible to him, borrowing money, trying to sell what I could legitimately sell… but it amounted to no more than around £600 over the months.
I went out and bought a £15 phone card to give the good news.
Son… I thought you had a good job? I need the money why don’t you have any?!
I told him it was no problem… I could get him home! I explained the loan.
What use is that? I’d be in the same situation, but in England…it’s much cheaper to live here
He was angry. And I remembered all those times he’d been angry before. The card ran out cutting him off mid-sentence. It was over. I was never going to speak to him again. I realised he hadn’t been asking me for help…he’d been asking me for money, that’s all.
Since then I stopped responding to his letters. I’d been struggling with the flat so I sold up and moved into a room. We lost contact.
Update 29-08-2010: I was reading through his letters yesterday and realised that I’d found the solution of a loan for repatriation earlier than I thought I had. I’d simply brought it up again during that last phone call and he essentially repeated what I’d said. I also think I’d continued to send him money for a while, but remained mute.
In 2001 I managed to find out that he’d renewed his passport in Quito in 1997, but that was all I had. In 2006 I was invited to a wedding in Lima, Peru, and took that as an opportunity to try and find him. I got close…searching the town of Arica in the far north of Chile. But if he saw the notices he didn’t respond. If he’d even searched Google he’d have found me for years and years. I even put a page up about him which was good enough for my estranged sister to find me with this year. In the end I reached the conclusion that he no longer wanted to find me.
And then the knock on the door in the early morning. I don’t know why the police do it that way. The officer was perfect…knew exactly how to break the news. Quickly, succintly, followed by the detail. He’d died on the 19th of July in a hospital in Arica, Chile.
I’m going to wrap this up now…it’s an awfully long piece to type entirely by phone and my fingers are aching. Hopefully I’ll be able to post it up on arrival to Lima. More soon… my plan is to document this trip, my feelings and my need to find reconciliation wherever possible. Sharing helps.
