Still miss you everyday Daddy – to my father Albert Mendonca 4 April 1925 – 5 June 2006

It has taken me four whole years to the day, to begin to write this. I think of him and miss him everyday. I did manage to blog about Mummy on her first death anniversary, but  have not been able to write about Daddy, till today. I have so many  good memories, so many good things to say, but have never been able to find the right words to say them. As I think about him again, today, as I do everyday, for the last four years, I think maybe it is time… I wonder when the hurt will go away?  Even as I bang away on the keyboard of my laptop, four years later, I can barely see the words as the tears keep streaming down my cheeks.  I keep telling myself, as I did, everyone, when I spoke at his funeral – to celebrate his life and not mourn his death. I have been trying to do that everyday but I do still miss him.

I think I miss him the most every time I watch sports, especially cricket, football and tennis. I could call him at any hour of the night and knew he would answer the phone on the second ring and talk about the game. He loved sports. He was a phenomenal sportsman himself (from all that we have heard and read about from all his year books and prizes and certificates) and very knowledgeable. I even lost my interest in following those sports for a while there, since Daddy was no longer there to chat with about them. I think of him every time I do watch a game, and wonder what he would have said about it. He taught me all I know about understanding those three sports – the rules and nuances of the game. My husband and son are fanatic sports fans too and do welcome  my company when they are watching games, they even generously  humour me with my incessant questions and suggestions.

I will never forget what a friend said the day Daddy died: “I wish he could have lived just another couple of weeks, he could have watched the French Open finals and the World Cup“. We agreed then, as I believe now, that he is watching it anyway, on a bigger, better screen in heaven or maybe even live at the ground. Daddy had watched the French Open through all his pain till the very last day. I think of him every year during the French Open and then this year of course the World Cup is round the corner again. I wish he could have visited me in London and seen Lords and Wimbledon and the Emirates stadium and all the other big football  grounds. I hoped he was there while I was thinking of him on my tours and watching the games at the grounds.

The other big hole for me was I missed him through my long and torturous journey of building that house in Goa. As everyone, who knows me, knows how painful that whole experience has been. It was pretty much all I ever talked  about for the last  four or five years. Was it more  painful because Daddy was not there to help me and I was left to figure it out on my own. Daddy enjoyed seeing the plans and was excited and keen to supervise the construction. That was his passion, his livelihood, his calling – building! As much as I hated it, he loved it, I needed his help to supervise that construction, but it was not to be. I was on my own. It was awful. As I often say it was Bharat’s dream that he hung on to, and I tried to share, while I lived the  nightmare. I hated it, hated every meeting, every decision, every challenge, every disaster, every plan and revised plan. I wonder if i hated it more because Daddy was not there and i was stumbling along on my own? I guess he was ‘supervising’ the construction as the house is almost done, we are 98% there and I have survived. The first thing everyone who visits or sees the pictures and knows Daddy says” wish he was here to see it, he would have loved it.”

The other time i always miss Daddy and  this may sound trivial, but is important to me is when I have to pack or unpack a suitcase, a box,  a carton anything. I hate packing and am just useless at it,  Daddy always packed for me. Bharat did takeover the responsibility the day we got married and recently Kunal has been stepping up to the plate and packing my suitcase but i do still miss daddy. I could go on and on and list a long list of pathetic things I should be able to do on my own as a forty – something woman without the help of my father but i can’t and i don’t and i hate doing them and wish daddy was there to help me.

As always, I have gone on and on about me. This was supposed to be about Daddy. My father was a  quiet, charming, gentle man, but that was only on first glance, once you got to know him better, he had a fabulous dry sense a humour, and  could be an incorrigible tease. At the same time, he was a sage, he always had great advice, a listening ear and a warm heart. He was extremely knowledgeable about so many things and though he was a man of few carefully chosen words (What chance did he have poor man, really, living with three outspoken women!) He was a great friend and so many people tell me  stories about how they remember him, the good times they shared, the laughs, his wicked sense of humour and dry jokes.  I guess he had a universal cross generation appeal as he would not just tease his own family and friends but all Ingrid and my friends and also the younger kids Mithika and Raahil’s friends, who all remember him fondly. He thoroughly enjoyed his glass of whisky and a good party. He was a strong family man, a pillar of society, the church and the community. He did more than his bit to help everyone he could.

If he was a great father and a fantastic friend, he was the perfect husband. And I do not say this lightly as I saw my parents live through almost 50 years of happily married life. No man will do for his wife and look after his wife the way daddy looked after mummy. This is not just me speaking as an idealist, over indulged and indulgent daughter. I have been told this by family, friends, neighbours, well wishers, strangers. While Mummy battled with the worst form of disease – Alzheimer’s for almost 15 years (I recently read this article which hopefully could give the rest of us survivors, some hope), Daddy nursed her with undying love. He looked at her with the same love and attention even when she was no longer the same person. He cared for her, spoke to her like she knew him. He loved her. He was not human he was a saint. I have heard Daddy called a saint by so many people that I know it is true. It was so hard to watch her suffer, and yet reassuring to see their love endure. He was true to her for better and for a lot worse. Though we will never know if she knew us and him for many years before she finally passed away, she deteriorated very fast  after he went. Maybe through her Alzheimer riddled brain she could still feel the love, he was her anchor and once he was gone, she withered away and joined him just a few months after. Emotionally there was a connection, a bond, between them that was so special.

Daddy suffered everyday as Mummy deteriorated  before his eyes.  That was certainly more than enough suffering and pain for such a good man. That’s why I find it so hard to understand how a caring and forgiving God put Daddy through so much more physical pain. He did not deserve to suffer physically anymore than he had already suffered emotionally. Daddy was diagnosed with the most painful kind of cancer pancreatic cancer in early 2006 and was gone by early June. It was an awful, painfully long five months. Pancreatic cancer is terminal and so terribly painful and hopeless as there is virtually no treatment or cure  that  Randy Pausch made famous for his Last lecture said it would have been better news to hear that he had AIDS than pancreatic cancer

(This video is worth watching for a number of reasons not just in the context of pancreatic cancer as it can give some perspective to our lives)

I could go on and on lamenting my father’s painful end, but it would be just self-indulgent. I am writing today in celebration of his life. I have been blessed with a wonderful family. I am eternally grateful and forever indebted  to my incredible big sister Ingrid  who took both our ailing parents into her own home and nursed them with love and care through so many tough times, hospital visits, failing health and daily disasters. She and her wonderful, patient husband and two kids were a unbeliveable support to both my parents. Daddy was lucky, he died at home, surrounded by loving family and friends,  as he wanted, not in a cold hospital bed with strangers,  poked and prodded with tubes and needles. I believe Daddy died a content man knowing he was well- loved and well- respected within his own family and across the wider community he influenced. He is fondly remembered and sorely missed by his extended family and large circle of friends. His legacy lives on in all his four grandchildren, each of them have a little part of him that is an everyday reminder of a wonderful man. And his legacy lives on, as Divya reminds me in his formidable eyebrows too, that sadly, both my children have inherited!