This is a letter to my father who has terminal leukaemia. I use this space to tend to my grief and to immortalise who he is. By writing this I recognise that we will never be able to say everything we wish to say. Death just doesn’t work like that. I hope it brings all those in grief comfort. We are never in this alone.
Dear Dad,
Today I saw a cormorant1. Stood tall and proud, surveying the scene from the top of an ocean pole. From a distance I thought I was mistaken. A seagull caught in the shadow. I scrambled across the rocks, gale force winds forcing me to bend and sway as onlookers watched this mad dash towards the sea. Most of them are here from London on their Easter weekend away, much to your annoyance. I doubt our visitors expected the ferocity of the sea. I wanted to ease their looks of concern, to call to them “I’m a local girl. My dad taught me how to clamber and climb, how to weave in and out with the breeze”. I heaved myself up onto the edges of the tidal pool, carefully walking around the seaweed-y edges. A master of balance. The wind a test of my tenacity. I crept as close to the poles as I could without falling in the water, and there the bird stood, wings slightly open, drying, following a morning of fishing.
I had spent the morning combing the seashores. The tide was almost out. I was looking for signs of spring, casts2 and old fishing reels so I could fill you with the hope of a bass filled summer. It does not help me to think too far ahead. On days when I think about the coming Winter or Spring next year, where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing, I am automatically filled with a deep sense of fear that you may not be here. I cannot think beyond a few weeks at most. Others wish for this level of mindfulness, but this is not something I can teach. Some days I pray for the days where I could imagine a future, but now, to experience life moment by moment, is the only way life can be.
I often think how the course of my life would have been different if it hadn’t have been for you. Dads in so many ways dictate the path their children take. Whether they support and nurture their dreams and appreciate the identity their child presents or whether they are able to avoid moulding them into something afflicted by their own life experiences. Some are not as lucky as me to have a dad like you, and regardless of whether our relationships with our fathers are good or bad or somewhere in between, who are father is and what he believes changes who we become. Luckily for me you were always the supporter. You seemed to be forever in awe of what I achieved, even more nervous than I on results days; cycling to meet the postman to collect the letters, calling every 10 minutes to find out if they had released the university honours list, waiting nervously in the car as I walked shakily into the school hall. You tell me on repeat that regardless of what I do you always will be proud. And in those moments that I do achieve I feel pride not just for myself but for you too.
Would you like to know more about who I am, and this Substack? Click here to read my about page, it will help to explain why I feel this is something I must do. You may also be interested in my other Substack ‘Tides and Seasons’ in which I live out this journey of reconnecting to nature and quitting the 9-5. The about page for this is here.
When you were young, you would collect field mice on the way home from school, placing them delicately in your satchel and cycling home. I imagine their little heads poking out of the pocket, wind in their fur and ears as the farms stream by. A freckled little boy peddling away, turning to check in on them with a crooked smile, keen to take them home and love them. A nurturer. That has always been who you have been. As you have tended to your garden, the numerous cats that have passed though this house or even as a boy bringing home leverets that had been caught in traps, nursing them as best you could back to health or onward in their journey to the other side. Some of my earliest memories are of you teaching me how to feed a blackbird that had been caught by our cat. Slowly encouraging them to open their beak, feeding them with a needleless syringe. Some mornings we would come to the shed to find the birds flapping around inside with a new lease of life, eager to escape the confines of our little wooden shack, or mice scurrying back and forth in a hay filled box, ready to be released into the bushes. I often wonder whether my love of animals and of nature would have existed without you. But, as your favourite phrase goes, you can bring a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink. I do not think it is as simple as you loved animals so I will too. There must of been an affiliation and awe with life carefully placed within me from the stars for me to love it so.
I remember pouring over fiction books that described the adventures of a vets daughter; hedgehog in the hall, badger in the basement. My love for The Animals of Farthing Wood was beyond comprehension. Friday nights were the best, I’d wait for you to come home from work and you’d present me with the latest magazine in the series. Hours were spent reading and absorbing every single word. You even enrolled me in RSPB juniors, my love for wildlife was so great. The backpack they provided was possibly the best backpack I had ever had. Red, yellow and black with the faces of badgers, hedgehogs and owls in the emblem. Along with my binoculars from my Christmas list I was ready to go. At school it certainly was not cool to admit your love of birdwatching, so at weekends we would head out on secret missions on our bike to scour the seashore and spot the latest birds, even one time taking the train to a far off place. I would look around me with a nervousness that somehow I would be found out. I’d be the wildlife girl or worse, teased mercilessly in the corridors of school. But this did not deter you, you encouraged me to be and love who I was, to fan the ember of joy being out in nature brought me until I was ablaze with my love for it. At University, I remember debating passionately with the lecturers board about the changes to the ecology field course. They were keen to move it to Cyprus or Portugal or some other far off land. Why not Britain? I said. We cannot lose touch with the wildlife that makes us who we are. A wry smile played on the lips of the leader of the course, his love of otters made it clear to me that he also felt the same. Other universities do offer the option to go abroad they said. When I reflect on moments like this I wonder why I ever left the research that had me feeling so alive.
As I watch little L grow, I become more convinced that we are born with a soul that has particular gifts we are here to nourish. She is an artiste in the making, spending hours dedicated to her craft, honing it. From a place of pure joy, not a need to perfect or impress. Just to be. People talk of the flow state. And when I watch her draw, that is where she is, somewhere up there in the cosmos, in her full being. When we are young, what we love bursts from us freely, we use every minute within our power to absorb ourselves in it. Perhaps as adults when we return to this, we are shaking off societal binds, cutting ourselves loose from expectation. When we release those binds strand by strand we feel our hearts begin to swell once more with the enormity of life. It is not an easy process, as those binds we have acquired pull us back and forth. As a thread loosens we move forward but are tugged back, until the next one breaks as we feel the spark rise within us. Then the next and the next, as we realise what it means for us to spend our time out here in our full purpose, communing with the universe, allowing our jigsaw piece fall perfectly into place. We spend so much time looking for something, when in reality all we have been looking for is a way back to ourselves.
I googled ‘mid-life crisis’ today. I remember uttering those words to my boss when it was clear I was no longer happy in my role. Opportunities were being offered to take the next step up the ladder, and my gut was hollering don’t you even dare. Have you ever had that sick feeling when you imagine taking a path? I wonder if you have. I have never asked. You have always been a man of duty. I am not certain that you loved your job, or even believed it to be your life’s purpose. And I wonder whether you see these feelings of intuition I have as whims that shouldn’t be followed. I came to the conclusion that our values may differ, that yours are so resolutely on family and duty that nothing else matters. This feeling that deters me becomes more and more obvious these days, especially when I feel it about the more comfortable option. When my soul yearns for the road less travelled, I listen. When I feel my gut say no on the expected path, my ears prick up and my senses are alight. No they say with a fervour that commands my attention. When my boss pressed me for the reasons, not convinced when I said that it wasn’t the right time, I joked that perhaps I had hit my mid-life crisis. We both laughed, me breathing a sigh of relief that I hadn’t somehow let the cat out of the bag.
According to google an early midlife crisis can start anytime between 35-44, and a late midlife crisis from 45-603. Well if googles right, I am right on time. Chip Conley uses the phrase mid-life chrysalis where all that we have accumulated dissolves away and we transform into butterflies, ready to pollinate the flowers as we go, making life better, somehow leaving it better than we found it. When others see us step into a knowing of who we are, they too also wish to join us so the chrysalis in itself can serve as inspiration.
has written an excellent piece on becoming an elder as opposed to elderly. We need to not only mature, but heal, become aware of who we are so that we may exist, develop and become wise. Instead of bleeding our wounds onto the next generation, we offer them space and an example to follow. I do not believe that I am in a mid life crisis, but I do believe that this grief I hold is coming back to myself. It strikes me that this new beauty that we may exist in as we age is just us returning ourselves to a time in our childhoods when we were happy.And with you I was always very happy. Although your primary love was always the sea, it extended beyond that to touch upon your love for nature. Sometimes I wonder if this is why I return to it now, back into the fold of research, animal behaviour, wildlife. Surrounding myself with others who no doubt spend their weekends observing wildlife and crouched hidden amongst the rushes. Perhaps it is because I wish to a return to a time I was happy, and forever be in that place with you. Or perhaps I have entered the chrysalis and I am dissolving away the experiences, expectations and smatterings of life to return to my souls true existence and calling. Whatever it may be I know I have you to thank for the joy it brings me. For nurturing my soul, my love in life and for always being my champion.
So as I begin to write my application for a research post in animal behaviour, I think of you, and us. The times we spent observing, watching and waiting. The fluttering of wings telling us our nurturing had been worthwhile, and the evenings spent in awe of the life I was yet to discover. I hope I get to tell you how indebted I am to you Dad, and that the new path I take will bring me closer to my soul and to you.
I am so lucky that you are my dad. And if I haven’t said it enough, thank you.
Love, always Dad.
Anna xx
Would you like to know more about who I am, and this Substack? Click here to read my about page, it will help to explain why I feel this is something I must do. You may also be interested in my other Substack ‘Tides and Seasons’ in which I live out this journey of reconnecting to nature and quitting the 9-5. The about page for this is here.
I am writing this essay as part of the 24 essays club with the wonderful
you can read more about the essay club below.Phalacrocorax carbo are large black seabirds, their height can reach almost a metre, with their wingspan reaching 1.5m on average. Known to be greater fishers, and prehistoric looking, almost reptilian in their nature.
Casts are piles of what look like very thin strings or tunnels of sand, that indicate the presence of worms. These areas can be dug, and bait collected for fishing. Small holes near the cast indicate the worms are near by.
Mid-life crisis was coined in 1965. There is a U curve, known as the U curve of happiness, where life satisfaction hits rock bottom around 45-55.
I’m not sure i believe in midlife crisis. I think it’s perfectly natural to shift our priorities and urgencies, to evaluate and ask ourselves the crucial questions (how do I really want to spend my short time on the planet? etc) when we see more clearly the unseeable view of our own mortality. It’s a good thing. Thank you for your ever-wonderful words
Beautiful, as always. And keep going. I moved into horticulture after decades in PR at the age of 40 - my first year of study was the last of dad’s life and the studying and being in nature was very helpful for me in that time. Also - nature is everything. Big hugs to you and your wonderful dad x