Goodbye dad - thank you

Two weeks ago today we lost our dad, grandad and my mum’s husband, Edward John Wallington, known to everyone by his middle name, John.

I don’t know how that fortnight has flown by nor how to make sense of what’s happened. I just feel sadness, jarring moments of painful absence but mainly a lot of love for him. It feels physical, that a part of me is gone forever. While we tried to prepare for the day he wouldn’t be around, it’s something you cannot prepare for. There is a finality that’s hard to come to terms with.

My dad was such a warm and humble man who quietly got on with life, always curious, always interested in other peoples’ interests. Always happy to help and get stuck in without a moment’s deliberation or reticence. He was so kind and caring.

Which makes what he had to endure over the last two years of his life all the more painful. First losing his ability to swallow. Then last year his ability to breathe without another tube, robbing him of his voice. That was the hardest. It turned out that the cause of it all had been missed, a tumour in his oesophagus he was initially told was treatable and then that it wasn’t.

Right now I am trying to focus on happy memories to quietly reflect on and celebrate his life. I have a small box of photographs that mum and dad gave me years ago among my old school photos, containing snapshots from random years.

My dad loved the world. He loved exploring it and sharing those adventures with us. As a young man he used his own means to train in London as an artist and designer, running a small studio in and around Old Compton Street in Soho, London. It was the heyday of Soho where he’d see Freud, Hockney and other famous artists in cafes and bars.

He was a talented artist himself, using gouache, watercolour and other media, focussed primarily on graphic design. Working on books, signs, print and whatever he was asked to turn his hand to. Photography was another of his loves - he owned an old fashioned black and white box camera - which worked well with his love of travelling the British countryside and world. He didn’t travel abroad much in the end, though he’d occasionally recall his year in Egypt or mum and dad’s honeymoon in France.

I still find it incredible how dad could put his hand to anything. He would make us extravagant birthday cards, build us treehouses, pet houses, cupboards, shelves, help with my random art homework. There wasn’t really anything he wasn’t able to have a stab at, always to a professional standard. Born in 1945, the last year of World War II, he was from a time before with a skillset and outlook to match.

In their forties, dad and mum changed direction to set up a number of successful children’s daycare nurseries, led by my mum’s newly found entrepreneurial drive when the need arose during the big recession of the early 90s. My dad’s design business had suffered and he sensed the oncoming tide of computers, a world he never wanted to know, right until the end. Entrepreneurs together, mum and dad made it a brilliant success.

Although my mum and dad are both born and bred Londoners, they are now Northerners too. Moving to Yorkshire around the turn of the millennium, starting a new children’s nursery before eventually turning their magic once again to starting a small holiday home business in their favourite part of the world, deep in the Dales alongside my younger sister. Their businesses always did well while remaining small. It feels very human, that they could have gone bigger but kept each to just the size it needed to be to live a quiet life and affordable for people.

Dad would never consider himself as talented, he would scowl or scoff at any suggestion like that. He did what he enjoyed or what needed to be done and he did a proper job of it. He enjoyed doing things because we needed his help. I think he was often at his happiest helping us, or working collaboratively with my siblings or my mum. He was a great cook too. I don’t know how he was able to do it all.

My love of nature I owe to my parents and grandparents, my dad leading us on adventures to discover the next animal or natural landmark. My dad was also a skilled gardener and he, my mum and grandparents encouraged my love of growing which has led to where I am today. In fact, my dad’s heirloom cacti and aspidistra were my first lesson in plant care and propagation.

He loved a laugh of course, usually sipping a good old fashioned stout over our family’s endless discussion about dreams and plans in a cosy country pub with a roaring fire. Anything was possible in our family, we just had to work out together how to make it happen. Making the impossible dream reality for each other has always been our favourite topic. I don’t remember him looking back in the past much, we always talked about the future. What’s next? What are we working on? What does life hold for us all?

I’ll miss dad greatly, not being able to seek his advice on future plans. I’ll miss him being interested in my latest harebrained idea or project, or us all turning our attentions to the plans of my sister or brother. Most of all I’ll miss his smile, filled with love for us.

Goodbye dad, thank you for the adventures, thank you for everything.

Love,