Of painful recollections

Mother's Day is always difficult for me. That's something I may have said before yet I feel I need to say it again and again until I come to terms with why it is difficult for me.

You see Mother's Day is the day I lost my dad. He died whilst I held him and it still hurts. Obviously today wasn't the exact day he died however it is the day that  will always remember him dying. I miss him, really do. Not the nasty drunken dad that made mine and other people's lives hell, but the gentle caring man that was there when my youngest son held his hand on our final New Years Eve together.

For those of you who read my other blog http://alcoholdebate.blogspot.co.uk/ you know how much my father's drinking has influenced my life and how I have challenged many of the preconceptions about alcohol and alcoholism however my father did so much more for me than he will ever know. And of course so did my mother who also is no longer with us. In fact I am the oldest surviving member of my family the Patriarch as so to speak.

As parents they did the best they could for me. I see that now as a father myself. They had many faults, both of them, but they did have good qualities that are often forgotten especially because people remember the bad days. I hope that my children will come to realise over time that I have many faults but I have always done the very best for them that I could at all times. My children you see mean the world to me. I have watched them grow into young adults and my youngest grow into a confident young boy and I m so proud of everything that they do. I will always support them the best that I can and to the best of my ability no matter what they may do in life. I hope though that they understand that above all though that I love them.

Now some may say I'm being a sentimental fool talking like this but  know that I never really connected with my parents the way that I think they hoped I would. I was always struggling with my over possessive mother, particularly when I started having girlfriends, heck she actively sought to play one off against the next at times. I remember when I was at Liverpool and my parents came to visit one day my mother said to my the girlfriend Zara, I'm so glad that he's got you, yet behind the scenes just as with Karen before, she was trying to engineer the relationship to fail. I mean what kind of mother doesn't want her son to be happy? When I eventually married (neither of the above I may add) there was constant pressure on me from my mother and constant sniping about my wife (although in the end that was the one that my mother probably called right). It was inevitable that we would fall out in time I guess. But not being with her when she died was a moment that I'm not sure I can ever forgive myself for even though it was 23 years ago this year. I should have been there rather than a hotel room in Dorchester where I was staying for the night because of work.

I will always love my parents for they were my parents and for what they helped me become. I will not make the same mistakes they made with me with my children I hope, just probably different ones. And I hope in years to come that they will forgive me for I am only human