If you know a conversation is going to be one of the most important conversations of your life, you remember as many details as you can, what you said, what the other person said, phrases and nuances, exactly when it took place. But I didn’t know that the last time I spoke to my dad was going to be the last time. How could I? There was no absolutely no warning, no indication that he was going to die two days later, at the age of 58.
So all I can really remember is that it was a Friday, and the tone of his voice, which was as comforting and familiar as it always had been, and that he would have been trying to make me laugh because he knew how homesick I’d been. I think, I hope I told him that I had an audition for a play the following day, because I know that when I tried to call him on the Sunday, the day he died, I was ringing to tell him that I had got the lead role, a part I would never get to play. And I hope I said that I loved him, but I can’t be sure.
When I returned home from America for my dad’s funeral I was given the letters I had written to him that had arrived too late to read. They were cremated with him, along with a letter I wrote to him after he died, telling him all the things I hadn’t had the chance to say when he was alive.
I think of my dad most days, not just Father’s Day. I miss him always.