Stephen Hirst

My dad died a couple of weeks ago. I wrote a tribute which I read at his funeral on Monday and which some people have asked me to share online:

I’m here today to tell you the story of my dad.

Since he passed away a lot of people, when offering their condolences, have used various words to describe my father: kind, polite, considerate, generous, easygoing, gentle, gentlemanly.

He was indeed all of these things, but looking back I see that the household my sister and I grew up in was so much more, one where interrogating the world around us, whether politically or philosophically, was welcomed, where disagreement was encouraged, even essential. For all his gentleness, my dad was never afraid of taking a stance on what he believed in even if everybody else in the room disagreed. He had a keen sense of right and wrong, his anger at injustice or unfairness could be visceral, and he simply loved a good and good-natured argument, particularly around the dinner table, and especially fuelled by heroic quantities of red wine.

From my own point of view, my father was simply a man who cherished being a dad. There wasn’t a school report which could go unpraised, no matter how middling. There wasn’t an interest, activity or piece of homework which could go unsupported, no matter how fleeting.There wasn’t a sports day, school play or concert that could go unattended, no matter how poor the performance.

This nurturing spirit extended right into the end of his life: he kept every book I produced, every birthday card his grandchildren created. His attendance switched to his grandchildren, popping up at sports days and nativity plays as well as birthday parties, babysitting sessions and even, on one incongruous occasion, a zorbing party.

Whether coming last in the egg and spoon race, playing a one-line shepherd, or getting rejected from a publisher, he would always tell me the same thing: it’s not the winning that matters, it’s the taking part.

Since his death a number of people have asked myself and my sister what it is we’ll miss the most about our father. A difficult question to answer, but perhaps it’s this attitude, formulated into similar phrases deployed during his parenting: ‘anything is possible’, ‘give it a go’, ‘if you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything’. Even in his later years, when speech was difficult for him and his mood could be low, the reassuring mannerisms which would accompany these phrases remained.

As a parent of his time, emotional effusiveness may not have come easily to him. His love was instead expressed through his actions. For example, he would pick up or drop off his children anywhere and at any time. When I was in my second year of university and finding life difficult, he would pick me up from Liverpool and take me home to Chorley each weekend, an 80 mile round trip. At the time I didn’t even think to question this, why he would do it, and do it without complaint. Now that I have children of my own, I know that those moments - in the security of his car, sitting alongside one another, listening to the radio, occasionally chatting about this and about that - are some of the loveliest two people can hope to have. Indeed, it’s moments like this - sitting in the car, having a meal, watching TV, getting a takeaway - that form a great portion of the ambient background of my childhood. Perhaps it’s these moments which I’ll miss the most.

It’s a shame our dad can’t be here because he would love an event like this: any kind of celebration, particularly where family unity was involved and a glass of wine was available. Funerals, birthdays, Christenings, New Year’s Eve, Bonfire Night: each of these to him was a bright detail in the pattern of life. Christmas held a particular significance, perhaps because his work ethic meant he allowed himself little time off during the rest of the year, but also because Christmas is a celebration of childhood and, again, he loved being a dad - the gifts, the presents, and the magic that children enjoy at Christmas were things he thrived. I could stand here and fill the next few hours with memories of our family Christmases: the traditions, the food, the decorations, that magic.

He loved being a dad, but being a grandad seemed to be something he was built for: each day, he would wave from his window as his grandchildren set out on their school adventures. I’m sure everyone here has been proudly informed of some achievement or other of a grandchild. Moreover, he earned a cherished reputation among his grandchildren as our family’s top-tier gift-giver, a role that my sister and I are anxious about occupying.

Another thing my father has left us with is music. The other ambient background of my memories of him is his piano playing. He was entirely self taught and would hear a song and then play it over and over, hitting wrong note after wrong note until he had it. This is the soundtrack of my childhood. Perhaps for someone for whom emotional directness didn’t come naturally, music was a tool in this regard, giving his heart a language, allowing him to express things which words could never fathom. It left him with a family which breathes in music like air: two children and five grandchildren who can either play or are learning instruments, a catalogue of recordings which I know we’ll all cherish, and above all a shared love of music, both as an act you perform in the world and as something you experience.

My dad’s story can’t be told in full without speaking about how his later years unfolded. Loss came to mark him - loss of his family home, loss of a marriage, loss of his business - compounded by the burden of a cruel and unshakeable illness which attached itself to him and caused him to lose his speech, his music and his mobility.

Although he wasn’t particularly religious, my dad was a traditionalist and I know he would have wanted his funeral service to contain at least one reference to the Bible. In recent weeks I’ve often thought of the biblical figure of Job, a blameless and upright man onto whom God delivers endless suffering and hardships in order to test his faith. And in the past few days I've also found myself awake and alone in the darkness, waiting for a miracle to reveal itself, as in the story of Lazarus: my father returned against all possible reason to the world of the living. I was never sure if my dad actually believed in God, but I personally don’t think I’ll ever forgive the universe for heaping so much adversity onto his life. However he was someone who had faith in better days: he was always so casually convinced that he would write a song that would go on to be a hit, that his lottery numbers would come up, that something would come along which would turn the wheel on his fortunes, that he would win. I’m sad for him that these visions of his life transformed remained unrealised and, to an outsider, the narrative arc of his life seems to fall short of redemption.

Or so it seems. The reason I was so keen to speak today was because, as I said at the start, I want to tell you my dad’s story.

In recent days I’ve found myself thinking up different stories, imagining the roads not taken, creating for myself an alternative timeline where the landscape of my dad’s life is smoother, where the challenges are simpler, the losses he suffered less profound.

But I struggle with any scenario I conjure up if I dwell on it for long. When life went wrong for my dad, my sister and I came together to support him, with my sister in particular taking on an extraordinary role in his life. Once again, love found its expression through actions, from housing him and tending to his medical and financial needs through to helping him with his shopping and driving over to his house each week to reset his computer password. During this period my dad’s capacity for emotional candour deepened and those wide ranging conversations we'd always loved took on a more open and heartfelt tone. Simply put, the family we are now was forged in the heat of that loss. It’s a family I wouldn’t have any other way and I feel certain my dad felt the same.

So yes, my dad’s lottery numbers remained elusive to the end, his songs are yet to grace the charts, he never turned that wheel, never won. But I can almost hear his voice telling me: really, it doesn’t matter. As with the egg and spoon race, it’s not the winning in life that counts but the taking part.

My dad fought - politely, gently - to live the life he wanted and took part wholeheartedly. That fight is now over and his taking part has come to an end.

But when I think of him, it’s no longer the stories of Job or Lazarus which come to mind but a brief passage which I’m told comes from the story of the prodigal son and which I once heard referred to as the most beautiful sentence ever written but only now fully understand why.

It reads: His father, when he saw him coming, ran to meet him.