Letters 2025
Letter 80
26-01-2025 (at home)
Dear D,
I went over to Belfast to St Steven’s Day to spend a couple of weeks away from it all with one of your half-sisters and her family. She moved there with her husband and their eldest daughter, twenty-one years ago. Not long after they moved, their second child was born and you & I flew over from London to see the new baby, your new cousin. Unfortunately, that was the only time you were there with me, but you were a young girl and probably only have a hazy memory. It was a nice occasion, the two of us travelling together, our first journey by plane. A third boy joined the family four years later, but you never got to meet him or in fact even the other two again after that first occasion. Moving on to today, your eldest cousin finished university last year, in fact she did well with a First and Commendation. The other two are also at university now. I often, maybe always feel the need to bring up memories, which one might imagine is pointless, yet they are real and you are part of them. Actually, history was my least favourite subject, which I dropped as soon as I was able, so it’s not the record that is in any way important to me, just that image of you as a bright, intelligent, good company who was interested in everyone and everything around you. Funny enough, I had just picked up a small photo album and was looking through it. Hard copy photos are so out of fashion nowadays. This album has been lying on the dresser in my living room hidden from view by other bits & pieces, which I hadn’t looked at it for years. It has a lovely one of my mam age seventeen, some of my dad & mam at their wedding reception, one with both in front and one at the back of the house they moved into after marriage & in which I spent the first twenty two years of my life, one with my dad holding me as a baby close to his face with my hand on his chin, random ones over time with my uncle, aunt, brother & sister, but loose, in the back of the album, there are a number of you between the ages of two up to six looking happy, often looking engagingly directly at the camera. This album is really a whistlestop journey through over a hundred years of memories, starting with my mam, who had the same name as you, and ending with you. The journey hasn’t stopped as we carry on in our lives. There will be a continuation of our journeys.
When I was your age the words estrangement or alienation were not in common use describing relationships within families. Occasionally we heard of fathers deserting their wife, sons, daughters or children running away from home. I’m sure the same unsatisfactory situations existed as much then as nowadays, but even with social changes and modern methods of communication, it was quite shocking for me to read recently an article in a major newspaper recently, that estrangement affects one in five families, or an estimated twelve million people touched by this in the UK. When we were parted and you asked for me not to contact you, I accepted your decision and I will always respect your wishes. But to be quite honest I have always felt somewhat guilty it must have been something I did wrong, some unacceptable behaviour pattern. Yet I know I loved all my children equally, treated them much the same, without any trace of a heavy hand, yet you were the only one who made that decision and I know it is not acceptable for me to attempt to make contact with you. It almost brings into focus another unfamiliar concept in current use. The word used to describe it is ‘gaslighting’, even unintentional gaslighting. There appears to be a collective view and acceptance of our situation. I cannot talk about you at any length even to my closest friend or relative, as our separation is considered factual with nothing to be done about it. So as usual, I have gone off on a tangent, without contributing to any kind of solution, just airing my thoughts, wondering if you will ever get to read them.
I should really move on to a safer subject. Manchester United, for example. Things are not going well there as well unfortunately, but as ever, as with you, I am forever optimistic. They won, just, this evening. The week before last, a friend got me a ticket and we went up to Old Trafford to see them win, be it in the dying minutes. I have a photo somewhere of you, as a young girl, wearing a Manchester United shirt, we bought on the day our family went to Old Trafford to watch a game in some style from a courtesy box. Can I dream that we can go together again sometime?
With all my love,
Dad xxx