I have never told my dad that I love him. I have never felt the need before now. I am sure he knows anyway. But now that he's been diagnosed, now that the prognosis has been handed down - now that he has his Macmillan nurse - I want him to know he means more than the world to me. But, like I said, he probably knows already.
See, Dad is a lorry driver, a trucker, a haulier - or at least he was until he retired a quarter of a century ago. You can't have a conversation like that with a lorry driver. The years of retirement haven't softened him. He's greyer and he's nearly deaf, but he still fills every cubic inch of space ever allotted him. Outside he's lost none of his stature; it's inside he's doing a vanishing trick.
He has a tumour growing round his oesophagus. He calls it his mushroom. At eighty-six, doctors can do little more than slow its growth, its theft of my father, with radiotherapy. He says he's going to beat it, kill the filthy fungus before it kills him.
If I turned up and blurted out my love for him he might reappraise his odds. I'll write a Sapphic ode instead.
See, Dad is a lorry driver, a trucker, a haulier - or at least he was until he retired a quarter of a century ago. You can't have a conversation like that with a lorry driver. The years of retirement haven't softened him. He's greyer and he's nearly deaf, but he still fills every cubic inch of space ever allotted him. Outside he's lost none of his stature; it's inside he's doing a vanishing trick.
He has a tumour growing round his oesophagus. He calls it his mushroom. At eighty-six, doctors can do little more than slow its growth, its theft of my father, with radiotherapy. He says he's going to beat it, kill the filthy fungus before it kills him.
If I turned up and blurted out my love for him he might reappraise his odds. I'll write a Sapphic ode instead.
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