Tim's Tales: In the footsteps of my father

This summer holiday is a bit of a pilgrimage, for this year has a poignant anniversary for me and my family. It was 50 years ago that my father died, at the very young age of 39, when I had just turned 12.

Because I was so young when my father died, my memories of him are patchy, but the ones I do have are treasured as a result. He was an Episcopalian minister (or priest as they call it in the Episcopalian church) and spent his final years at St Andrew’s in Prestonpans, the wee church that no longer exists close to where Lidl now stands.

An access road to later housing developments at the east end of the ‘Pans now runs through what used to be our house and garden. There are few signs that a church and house once stood there, but every time I pass by, I see them in my mind’s eye.

I can hardly believe 50 years has passed since the last time I saw my father. I mean, that’s half a century and I don’t feel that old. But you’d think that after all this time I’d have got over it, and I suppose I have. It took some time, there was no trauma-informed support in those days, so I had to find my own ways to come to terms with it.

Cherishing and reliving memories was part of that. But I discovered it’s difficult immediately after the death of someone close to even think of your time with them as past or gone. There is a process of denial to go through first, and then finally accepting the person is dead feels like a betrayal. In such deep grief, it’s often impossible to enjoy memories of someone, as they just seem to emphasise the loss and add to the pain.

I was never allowed to talk or cry about it, so I suppose I had no choice but to ‘move on’. I put my memories and emotions in cold storage and that made me feel better. Except it didn’t really. I carried them with me, keeping them out of sight and mind, but they were always there.

But then, 30 years ago, I became a storyteller. I studied the tradition and practised the craft, building on my personal experiences of storytelling from my childhood.

It’s not that I had completely forgotten the memories, it was that I hadn’t celebrated them with joy or told them, not even to myself. But as a storyteller, I understood we are our stories and that our memories are our stories. I needed to honour and celebrate my own memories if I was to do the same with others. So my sealed memories and emotions from my past began to thaw.

I needed to do this if I was to bring my father back from being dead.

The power of stories to do this is illustrated in the West African tale The Cow-Tail Switch. It tells of a man who was killed by a leopard but is then brought back to life by being remembered. I know stories can’t do this literally, but as American author Justin Cronin said: “As long as we remember a person, they’re not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.”

Stories from our memories about someone help us remember them in this way.

Becoming a dad gave me extra desire to bring my father back to life. I wanted to do it for my kids so they would remember the grandfather they had never met. Through the stories of him, they got to know him personally.

These days, we have photos and videos of almost everything, but I only have a handful of photos of my dad, so the stories often relied on my memories, and the memories of my brothers and other family members. They really have brought their grandfather back to life for them. They now have memories to share with their own kids if ever they have them when they grow up. A memory can be an inheritance as much as cash or property.

Many of my memories of my dad involve adventures with Tangus, the boat my father made. We were living in Pilton at the time he made it but, when we moved to Prestonpans, he stored Tangus in the boatyard that is still there by the beach, although the small jetty is long gone.

When my 10-year-old daughter recently went kayaking with Beyond Boundaries at the ‘Pans shore, I couldn’t stop seeing my father and Tangus with us by the boatyard. And my daughter felt the same.

And hence the reason for our summer holiday pilgrimage.

An inheritance from my father was a lasting love of the Highlands and of certain lochs where we sailed on Tangus. I have passed this inheritance on.

Tim (left) with his father, his brothers and their boat Tangus at Loch Oich 

And so, on this 50th anniversary of my dad’s death, we will be visiting places where those memories were made all those years ago, by interlacing them with new ones with his grandchildren he never met, but who know him well from the stories about him.

I write this by the side of Loch Oich, which is a theatre of my childhood memory, and the nearby section of the Caledonian Canal is where the ashes of both my father and mother are scattered. I told tales of our boating adventures.

We are car-camping and, when we woke this morning, my two youngest ventured outside. I found them by the loch side.

“We are just chatting with our granddad and telling him about our memories of him,” said my daughter.

Those memories are now joyful, funny and make my dad not only a part of me but also of my children, who never met him.

There is a memorial service on August 13 at 6pm at St David’s Church in Pilton for anyone who would like to celebrate my dad’s life.