The Freak Box

” Dad’s gone mate”…

There are many moments in life that you will remember to your final raspy gasp. 

Being told you will be a Dad and the subsequent horror of the delivery room,  your first of 274 goals at amatuer level (brushed the laces from a left sided cross….they all count), your first proper beer (Malty Yank Wank Schlitz one 14 year old Christmas), your first snog (always unforgetable but a tad frantic), being told Jen was seriously ill and seeing my Mum depart this world in the pin drop silence of a hospice.

Date, time place etched into your being… Pixar level ‘core memories’…

At 1353 hours on 3rd October 2025, standing in the living room killing time before I went to play snooker my older brother rang me to tell me the Old Man had finally released this Planet from his grip…..

….Hmmm….how did I feel?

I wasn’t shocked or even particularly sad given the announcement.  I felt more for my estanged younger brother who had stuck it out for the last 8 years and dealt with the descent alone so my primary objective was offering him some help, which I did. And in that moment I was thrust into a scenario I had sworn blind  I wouldn’t be involved in for the majority of the previous decade.

Now me and the younger have a fraught history as we are both our fathers son and so giving way seems to be a complete impossibility.  This was a different situation however and so reopening a line of communication after so many years was a necessity.  The stark reality was that in this moment the ‘problem’ was no more and so a re-engagement was possible.

It went well.  It would be possible to get through this without the need for a roll-around as we both just saw the need to get it done.  He seemed in full control so I simply left the door open for him to task me as appropriate should he need me.

So there I was….parentless.  I went to snooker.  I won and went for a few beers as is the tradition, I mean I was moulded by this kind of attitude, never let your mates down.

I met my oldest mate in a local pub and we shared a moment after he raised his glass to ‘The Orphans’ of which he was also one. He’s always the right man for this situation as our mothers’ were ill at the same time and went fairly closely together so we had been here before.  It was the Heineken I needed at the time. 

After a few pints I went home and shed a few tears but I’ll come to that later.

And so that was that.  Over the next month, because the younger decided he needed a month, I existed in a parentless state although I’d been effectively living in that since my Mum died nine years previously so it was kinda business as usual…. but not quite.

‘Not quite’ ….hmmm….I felt no regret, no guilt for the past 8 years of silence with the old man but I felt…wrong.  Almost like a light or some shit had gone out within me and because I didn’t feel this when Mum went I can only assume it was specific to the pair actually being no more.  I remain this way as I type… It’s weird and was unexpected.

During the wait for the day of days I had several discussions with all my brothers about what could happen at the funeral and any potential issues that may crop up fuelled by anger or grief. 

I had a particular issue with a faction of the family which could do with a right good hiding but you can’t really stop people attending regardless of my older brother’s offer to “fuck them right off”, so I knew I’d simply have to bite my lip unless it was brought to my door directly.

The real problem was that three quarters of the offspring weren’t interested in attending the funeral as we had effectively shut down all communication with the old man after years of viciousness.  When you cut someone out of your life like that you aint really interested in standing in a room while people who never really knew the fucker tell what a great man they thought he was.

The upshot was that the younger was agreeable to the rest of us deciding how to deal with any cobblers we faced at the funeral in any way we fancied.  There would be no sugar coating, no speeches from me and any eulogy would be from his perspective and not in the name of the rest of us.  We were attending out of duty and duty alone.

The younger he had been on the receiving end of a softer version of the old man (obviously it’s all relative) but the rest of us got the proper nasty years and as he never really experienced that a few home truths needed to be explained as he was very much pushing that we remember the good times.  Sadly the good times only really existed up until you were about 15 and even those first 15 years were spattered with endless arguing and violence between parents.  It was rarely if ever stable mainly because the old man was unstable in a petty, petty way.

Younger brother struggled to understand this initially but when I pointed out that I left home at 22 and the older was gone at 18 into a negative equity world of 15% mortgages which isn’t normal and only rubber stamped the need for both of us to escape as soon as possible he started to get it.  It’s a different world now but I expect my kids to still be sponging off me until they are well into their mid to late 20’s but even in the late 80’s and early 90’s leaving home at 22 and 18 was unusual.

As you do upon the death of anyone whether you liked them or not you reflect on their life and so I started to think about all the stuff involving the old man from when I could first recall.

It would be completely wrong to say it was all bad.  It wasn’t.  There were good moments particularly when we were between the ages of 8-13 when you threat level was low.  The old man loved Christmas and could be funny, to me anyway,  during those years but even those moments could disintergrate on a look or a misplaced word which could spark him off.  This sounds dramatic but is true.  You never really knew which bloke would wake particularly after a Sunday afternoon session.  It was a tightrope.

There are too many stories of his exploding temper but I need the catharsis of explaining a few to justify my lack of emotion over his end as even I feel that I’ve taken it too well.

He wasn’t really that ‘hands on’ with me but as a kid he did ooze a palpable dread in the background.  The older had the bad stuff as he lacked a certain humour to placate the prick so he got a lot of the nasty. As a result he is rigthly ambivalant to this situation we now find ourselves in.

We were 70’s and 80’s kids so a bit more robust that my offspring.  We were loose on the streets and resolved stuff with fists on a regular basis so the odd slap from the old man wasn’t really the problem but he was a master of the psycological dissasemblage and in hindsight I think he quite liked that power.  He was cutting and vicious and liked to exploit weakness even when we were small.  Desperate stuff really.

I have kids and they get on my tits occasionally whether that be not getting up till one in the afternoon or endlessly leaving a buttery knife in the sink after having toast at two in the morning but ruin them for it?  No….I just moan about it to Jen and we both ignore it. 

When you have kids you are responsible for creating people….people that will love you and have fun while they do it.  You attempt to create decent humans who are happy and have a place and a role in society and you focus on protecting them rather than belittling them but the overriding emotions with your kids should be love and fun….but not first names or ‘best mates’….that’s never been my thing….I’m their Dad…

The day of days comes after a long, long time of thinking and we get their fairly painlessly with only a few moments of tension between myself and the younger.  It’s mostly good and he’s all set. 

As I arrive at the crematorium I’m reminded of my Mum as it was the place of her final journey and so being near it, given that I refused to enter it once before for the funeral of a friends wife, it raises the pulses.  As ever there is a lot of standing about shaking hands in a sombre way and nodding at paltitudes given from people who didn’t really know the real man. 

I take it, mostly, but occasionally break character to explain that we weren’t close and eventually I’ve had enough and enter the building alone to sit at the front giving me the opportunity to ignore the noise.

So there I sit….in front of a box containing the old man.  A box on the same plinth my Mum lay.  It was tough so I took a few gulps as I didn’t want a few of my old man’s acolytes to think the tears in the room were for him.  Theses people never knew the bloke I did.  They got the laugh, the ‘good old uncle’ who would splash the cash to fuel they nights out. 

In a pub the old man was popular when he wasn’t insulting people for ‘a laugh’.  He knew everyone and wasn’t shy of wallet….they knew that and filled their boots and loved him for it.  Fair play to them….The best of times as it were…

After everyone is in and sitting behind me and my two brothers the attending Humanist starts his work.  We were brought up Catholic but we all pretty much ditched that hocus pocus early on. 

It’s funny really because my only recollection of religion in the old man was from Weddings, where he’d invaribly find a pub to sit in away from the main event, funerals similarly, a midnight mass where he told a young group of pissheads to ‘Shut the fuck up’ triggering a double take from the priest or a major row between my parents one Sunday evening as Mum had failed to take us to mass when he was unconscious pissed.  He was mostly this reasonable on a Sunday and religion was merely an aspiration for us ‘Pigs’.  Fuck knows….maybe he fancied one of us being a priest or some shit but if that were true he would have led the charge rather than expected Mum to deliver the goods on his behalf.

Anyway the bloke in charge ramps up the soft spoken symbolism in an explosion of wispy hair and a bad tie and we are off!!

He does a decent job talking about the youth of a bloke who’d never really told me any of this stuff.  From an independent persepective it’s a great listen with all kinds of factoids and awe inspiring words.  He has clearly flowered up his material but me and the older go with it with the odd confused side glance as this is merely a clock ticking down event. 

We have a slight hiccup when the younger is invited to the front to delver his version of events in much the same way that a witness for the defence rocks up behind the curtain at an orgainsed crime murder trial. 

He was never saying the stuff he wrote and I knew that but neither Wispy Hippy nor the younger have a copy so we all sit uncomfortably while they search phones for the WhatsApp conversation containing the draft. 

We get there in the end in a “..err, well,…err..” kinda way.

Sadly I’ve heard a lot of eulogies in my time and it is safe to say that most of them are bollocks.  To be fair it’s not really the event to say “he was probaly over the side but he liked his Mum” but it would be nice if people kept it real to a degree.

Jen is under strict instructions to keep it real when I go after saving the nation from imminent anihilation in an act of selfless bravery.  If you recall at my state funeral Gwyneth Paltrow will be weeping uncontrollably behind Scarlett Johannson, Aniston and Winslet waiting her turn to deposit a Black Rose garnished with a single tear on my coffin but she will hear and accept that I was a bit of a moody prick with a short temper and a deep sense of social paranoia. 

You can’t help how you are built so never hide it. 

I’ve annoyed enough people in my time to fill a football stadium but that is me.  Everyone has hated me at some point but most have gotten through it so let’s bin the saintly shit and get the nub of the issue….faults and all.  There’s only so many benign Michael McIntyre’s in the world and I ain’t that… If we’ve fallen out then I most probably love you…If we haven’t then it’s your fault.

I listen to the younger’s words spewed from the mouth of ‘Wispy McHippy’ slightly wondering if I have been transported to a different funeral.  Most of this stuff means nothing to me or the older and certainly wasn’t our experience.  We appear to have been the WW1 tunnellers going hand-to-hand with the Hun as opposed to the younger’s Captain Darling eating tea and cake 200 miles away from the carnage.  In another world I would have stood up and said something but that would have delayed the ending so  I stay firmly rooted in the now…

….the clock ticks on….I can hear my cousins ears creak under the weight of her hubble-esque glasses….all my senses are primed for exit but wait…

Next up some Paddy tune I’ve never heard from a bloke in a stetson while we watch a show reel of photos.  I have most of these photos but they still amount to less than I have of a lunatic ex of whom I had a 4 year relationship with in the 90’s.  Blimey Charlie that was a mistake but even that will be sarcastically mentioned at my funeral if I have my way…. Madness but worth the tittering from a distraught Kelly Brook who has arrived late as she was consumed with grief and ‘couldn’t go on’ after my bullet ridden corpse is found…

To be fair the photos were tough as a few had Mum in as well as my kids in their early non ‘I’m skint…give me money’ years.  I nearly crack at this point but I manage to hold it together as one of the fuckers behind me ain’t getting the satisfaction of seeing me shed a tear.

Our time is up in this echoey room and so we end with Sinatra and ‘My Way’ or as we knew it ‘My Way (or no fucking way)’. There was never a more poignant song for the bloke staring at a lid although he’d probably complain that it was the wrong version. 

I leave past the coffin and touch it….I owe him that I suppose for playing his part in my arrival in the world and walk out the back door alone not looking back.  This part is over.

I’m not keen on the post funeral chat over the flowers in usually cold, windswept parking areas.  Not sure what is too be gained by almost congratulating everyone involved in a process  which is taken out of your control.  The ‘post match’ stuff always seems stretched and awkward to me.  I see the wake as the moment to remember rather than the time when you are hoping to cadge a lift, slink away or move the car to avoid a ticket.

We head to the wake in a very nice pub and better venue to the one my dear Mum had.  This will always rile but it is what it is.  The old man is paying so it’s fill your boots for one last time.

The ‘good old uncle’ cousins will of course hit the large Aperol’s as it’s ‘what he would have wanted’.  I keep my distance from this lot and elevate towards my Mum’s side who knew the score.  We chat away with little mention of the old man as they know my feelings.  I’m more on the Mum side through geography more than anything else and they are all great people who like a proper family unit love each other.  This is how stuff should be but never really was for us…

My Bruv from another Mutha decided not to attend.  To endlessley quote the knight from Indiana Jones:

“….He chose wisely….”

The old man was married before and had this brother but left early messing up another soul.  I speak to Bruv regularly and it appears that at least the old man was consistent as he was the blueprint for poor paternal parenting before we came along.  Bruv has similar stories to us, similar scenarios in life when dealing with the fucker and so his decision not to appear here appeasing the acolytes was the correct one. 

I sink a few G and make small talk and decide that if asked I’ll now tell the truth and explain that me and the deceased weren’t mates or even that close in the last 40 years.  We were thrown together and existed in a hostile environment where two people were constantly at war with the kids as collateral.  This should never happen.  If you get to that stage it’s time to walk in seperate directions rather than grind it out until death leaving the bodies of the innocent strewn across the battlefield.

….and then it’s over….. beer has been sunk, politeness exchanged, cousins avoided…no one else needed to die to reach the end….

I return home with the older, Jen the kids and my neice and we sit and talk.  There’s a few piss taking laughs but there is a strangeness to it, an emptiness but at least a finality. 

I end up sitting alone, trollied and have a bit of a weep.  Tears have been shed throughout but not really for the man but for the loss of what should have been if he wasn’t so destructive. 

When I told him 23 years ago that Jen was pregnant there was no real joy, there was merely advice:

“…if it’s a boy you’ll need to dominate him when he becomes a teenager otherwise he’ll take the piss out of you….”

Tragic stuff….but there you have it.  Parenting 101 circa 1933….How could it go wrong?  Luckily none of us have taken his advice and our kids are our worlds.  We’ve all done well enough and never caused any polis induced grief which is mainly due to doing the complete opposite of what we saw and were expected to do.  I suppose in a twisted way he got it right. 

The old man chose his path.  He created us and in the end reaped what he sowed with years of isolation from three of the four boys he sired.  This isn’t coincidental.  I have no regrets over that and no guilt that he saw little of my kids as his endless piss taking would have affected them….I couldn’t have that.  You need to cut out the grief in life not embrace it as you only have so long on this planet and laughing is more powerful than bitching. 

Laughing, Family and friends are everything.

And so like the crew of the Demeter transporting Vlad Dracul to Whitby for ‘shits and giggles’ we have all been chewed and spat out without a second thought on his ship.  But much like Dracula the Dementor in Chief is now gone but not in a blaze of glory…although flames were required.

I’m not religious and so don’t believe in fiery pits or clouds and wings…you just stop and he has just stopped. If I have a regret it’s not seeing him before the end only to see if he had regrets, if he wanted to apologise… I think I know the answer but I’ll never really know…

So Dad thanks for the ‘memories’ of childhood christmasses and cosy winter mornings, cutting remarks, slurred conversations, throat grabs minutes before girlfriends arrive, dinner plates embedded into walls, and many Sunday mornings screaming the place down so the neighbours call the polis who then threaten to knock you out. 

Thanks for the full teapot on the on the back after you slammed your fist down on a table as Mum did something spurious that you didn’t like.

Thanks for teaching us to never back down, say what we thought and take no shit (I actually mean that) and thanks for the huge Christmas house smash up as Mum bought you the wrong Christmas card which you saw as her ‘taking the piss’.

Thanks for the core memory of you telling Mum in a hotel in the Isle of Wight ‘Let’s have no rows this holiday yeah?’ which clearly isn’t fucking normal and the beach hut explosion as Mum wasn’t happy with the hot plate you bought so she could cook burgers on the beach.

Thanks for not attending any of the near 700 football matches I played as you were ‘busy’ drinking and for the West End trips so early that the shops were shut because you had to get back to hear the bolts open at the local at noon….  

And thanks for the Mother punching which is indellibly burnt onto our brains….Cheers for that you fuck…

With you and Mum now gone we become the ‘Orphans’ and next on the Chronological list to go.  But while I’m waiting I intend to have a right old giggle and do lots of stuff with my own tribe.  Fun is the key….

Godspeed Old Man….