Word got out and what people said was that Dad had been a person of such saintly character that his body had to remain uncorrupted. I was just a kid when he died and nearly my whole life Iâve been hearing everyone say what a good person he was. But to see him emerge that day shifted my thinking. It was as if his early death had been a metaphysical error. It was as if his body was refusing the fate that befell him, as if this whole time he had been awaiting a fairer judgment.
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As the second eldest, I was old enough to be aware of how difficult the situation was for my mum, and so I was the quietest. Sometimes, the person who is the best behaved receives the least attention and is the most overlooked. I tried to be good, not causing my mum any more grief, but in doing that I tended to make myself disappear. At home in England I was often subdued, but when we went to Jamaica I felt carefree and happy and able to express myself in a completely different way.
He would smile, perhaps relieved by my unaffectedness. Sometimes Yasmeen cried. I thought two crying daughters would be too much for him, so I trained myself to wait until I was alone, in my closet or in the bath. My father would wipe Yasmeenâs face, hug us both, ask us if we wanted chocolate milk.
âGood girl,â heâd whisper in my ear. I was good because I was restrained. My father, I believe, carried a lot of hurt from his relationship with my mother. He did not like to see the related pain radiating from his daughtersâ eyes.
Those letters taught me about longing. Reading them in front of my father taught me to hide it, often even from myself. I know now what a dangerous kind of denial that is. It leaves you ravenous. It makes your seismometer vibrate when the phone call you are shocked to discover you have been waiting for your whole life offers you precisely what you are terrified to want: Hello, Nadia. This is your mama.
The mention of Kuan Yin was spontaneous; I did not know whether Jack was familiar with her, and, when he was not, I needed to explain her to him. This took some time and threatened to overwhelm the session, taking him away from his feelings and into his intellect. But I wanted to turn around Jackâs long-standing sentiments of never having been enough. If he could imagine himself, even for a moment, as the healer, I hoped this would begin to offset his unquestioning identity as someone who needed to be healed. His slightly off-balance reaction to our interchange suggested some degree of success. Instability is sometimes a sign of new possibilities.
When I was a boy, I wasnât often seen. I was looked after, cared for. I was held and comforted, especially after some painful experience. But I wasnât often seen. I was a good boy when inside I wanted to rage. I tried hard, all the time, when inside I wanted not to care. I was compliant, and therefore complicit, in not being fully appreciated.
I have spent many years judging my dadâs performance as a father. I have spent much less time considering what it took for him to keep going, and to give me what he did. He knows Iâm writing about him, and about the things that went wrong and the places where we both fell short. Opening up in the way that he has a radical act of generosity.