14 years after his dad died, Pat Fitzpatrick realises he's become just like him
He sits like his dad, uses his sayings, even crosses his hands the way he used to. After years of rebelling against his father, realises he’s become just like him
John Fitzpatrick would have been 100 this year. As it was, my father almost made it to 86, dying in Cork University Hospital in 2005 after a short illness. I can still remember sitting with my mother in front of his body in the 4am gloom, wondering what he’d make of the candle and religious statue the nurse had placed on his bedside locker.
I started crying as it sank in, telling her how grateful I was that he sacrificed so much so I could have an easier life. I can’t remember her reply, but it was probably funny. My mother loves a bit of dark humour.
He was well-loved. Even today, people who knew my dad in his native Kinsale will tell you that John Fitz was a lovely man, a gentleman. He was kind, measured, slow to anger, quick to forgive and move on, with a ready shrug when someone started bitching about something, as if to say there’s no point in getting upset about these things. He was funny with it, in an understated way.
I somehow failed to get along with this man for a long time. The tragedy of being a child is that, at some point, most of us decide to turn against our parents, no matter how nice they are.
My rebellion involved terrible second-hand clothes, drinking a bit too much and flirting with dodgy politics. I was having great fun, but I was also a self-righteous cliché in a manky corduroy jacket. I could see it annoyed my dad, which was probably the point.
We got through some quality time in his final months, pushed together when I’d go to visit him in hospital and there was nothing else to do but chat and reminisce. He was his same old self, a bit quieter than usual and vaguely disappointed that his life was coming to an end.
It was typical of the man that he didn’t rage against the dying of the light; all his life he just played the cards he was dealt and, now it was time to play the last hand, he went gently enough, with no regrets.
I resented this gentleness, growing up. We had a crazy dog when we lived in Kinsale, a dalmatian who used to go for five mile runs by himself and greet people with a little bite on the face. Everyone in the town said the same thing: How could a mad dog like that belong to a man like John Fitz?
I wanted a mad dad and felt I was missing out because I never saw him drunk or gregarious or being the centre of attention, like a few other members of the family. It felt wrong to have a dad who was good at drawing and music and calming people down just by his presence.
My cousins on my mother’s side nicknamed him Rambo, which was funny if you knew him, but it kind of pissed me off as well.
I feel foolish now, just writing it, and can see that I was an arsehole at times. I don’t mean arsehole in terms of being trouble. I didn’t get arrested or anything, though my mother told me soon after dad died that he was convinced I was going to join the IRA. Don’t ask me where he got that idea, it’s not like I was wandering around the house in a balaclava, belting out Wolfe Tones songs.
But I was an arsehole in the way I set myself against him, way longer than I needed to. It’s one thing to scoff at your old man when you’re 15 – I was still at it when I was 35. I used to take the piss out of him for muttering angrily at the television during the news; I’d get toddler furious whenever he said anything nice about Margaret Thatcher, which was a lot. I acted as if I found him incredibly irritating, even though anyone who ever met him, loved the man to bits.
Then he was gone. I don’t regret not telling him that I loved him. Both of us would have needed a couple of pints for that to work and he always hated what he called public house talk.
I just regret I didn’t grow up until I was 35, when I started to treat him with some respect.
I don’t want to make it sound like my father and I never got on. We actually had that classic, Irish father-son relationship, arms-length rather than arms around, enjoying our time together, looking forward to our time apart.
The one thing I gave him is Manchester United. Back in the 1970s, I allocated everyone in my family an English football team to follow, keeping Man United for myself. (They got relegated soon after I dished the teams out, in case you think I was doing myself any favours.)
My sisters had Everton and Man City, my mother Coventry and dad got Derby County. That was good for him at first: Derby had a decent team in the 70s, and managed to win a couple of titles.
He got sick of them in the 80s, and decided to follow Man United instead, without even asking my permission. So, we’d hunker around the radio, listening to hissing long-wave commentary on BBC Radio Two, bonding over United’s ups and downs, glad we could put aside our bickering about Thatcher for a while.
Other happy memories feel like they happened yesterday. The way he used to buy me rice pudding for dessert in the Walter Raleigh Hotel in Youghal, when be brought me down there as a 10-year-old on work trips; the day he told me why the sky was blue on a similar trip back from Timoleague; the way he used to smile at me, all the time, now that I think of it.
Now, 14 years after he died, I’ve started to notice I’m literally turning into the man. He had this way of sitting in an armchair, cross-legged, his hands joined at the fingertips as he made his point. I’ve started doing it myself. I don’t mean I’m doing it deliberately; it’s more I’ve suddenly become aware that I am sitting just like my dad.
I also say “good man” to my son the way my dad said it to me whenever I did something right. I know this is going to make it sound like I’m on mushrooms, but sometimes it feels like he is inside my mind, not as a memory, but actively guiding the way I behave.
Now that I have kids of my own, I realise I must have been subconsciously watching my father’s every move.
For all my bone-headed arrogance, assuming the man didn’t have a clue, some other instinct in me said watch this guy, he knows what it’s all about.
What he really knew about was decency, giving people a fair go, as Alf Stewart would say on Home and Away. It turns out most men are decent. For all the talk of toxic masculinity, the world wouldn’t work if the vast majority of fathers (and mothers) didn’t pass on a sense of decency to their kids.
Spend 10 minutes at the school gate or in the playground and you’ll see fathers aren’t just about showing their kids how to kick a ball; most of them spend most of their time teaching their smallies how to be a better human.
This saying “good man” and sitting like my dad has taught me the golden rule about parenting: Your kids are watching you all the time. It doesn’t matter what you tell them to do, what matters is how you behave yourself. This surveillance is so strong it can affect the way you sit, 14 years after the person who showed you how to do it has disappeared from view.
I hope I can pass on my dad’s sense of decency to my kids, along with his generosity and ability to shrug away the little things in life that aren’t worth the grief. They probably won’t thank me for it for a while, but then that’s the deal when you have kids.
It’s taken me a while to realise dad did way more than make sacrifices so that I could have an easy life. It’s only now, in my 50s, that I’m getting a grip on all the things he passed on to me. I feel bad in a way that I only gave him Manchester United in return.
