I haven't seen my father for nearly twenty years when my parents divorced so I can't really comment on him, my mother died four years ago from breast cancer...something which my sister is now fighting. My grandparents, in their 90s', found this extremely hard to deal with but overcame in the same stoic fashion of those of that generation.
Unfortunately my grandfather died five weeks ago and seeing my grandmother struggle with her daily routine without the person that shared almost every single day of their married life is utterly heartbreaking. Perhaps because I haven't had a father around or perhaps simply because of the man he was; he was the man I loved and respected most in the world. Having joined the army in late 1939 at the age of twenty, in a bid to have some say in which regiment he ended up in, he was sent to Morpeth in the NE of England where he met and quickly married my grandmother. He then joined what was later to become the Parachute regiment, in order to earn the extra shilling or so. He was sent to North Africa initially before heading to Italy and Cassino. After five years of war and never seeing my grandmother he was sent to Greece for a while before finally being demobbed and able to reunite with the wife he'd last seen five years before.
My love and respect comes from knowing the hellish time he, and so many others of his age, had during that period yet only talked of the fun times and his mates. He then settled down to live the life he thought he'd never get and put everything into raising his family and providing unceasing and unquestioning love. Something that is hardly rare among those that returned but to those of us lucky enough to not experience such times can only marvel at and benefit from.
So let's remember our fathers, but also our families and the things that they have done for us that have made us the people we are.
My grandfather gave me his photograph albums of his pictures taken during the war, he'd make each jump with a small 35mm camera, the name of which I don't know unfortunately, tucked into his jump smock...very much against orders I believe. I'm now in the process of scanning them for the rest of the family.
