On the Occasion of Your 60th Birthday
Today is 60 years since my father Geoffrey Bruce Wintle was born in Sydney, son of Ellen and George and joining two older siblings, Robert and Katherine. This would've made today his 60th birthday, and given who I've become over the last few years, I feel as though this would have been a big milestone event. I'd have organised a huge party and invited everyone I could think of, his closest friends would've helped me plan and prepare, people would have flown in from all over the country to help celebrate, and I'd have given a rousing and heartfelt speech about what my dad means to me. Tragically, his life was shortened suddenly by cancer at the age of 43 (an age that's starting to feel scarily close for me). So there will be no milestone or party, his parents and siblings have all passed, and I've long since lost contact with anyone who he would call a close friend.
I still feel like celebrating though, because even though I only knew him as a child and had less than four years living with him, he had and still has a profound effect on who I am today. Since I never went through the adolescent phase of realising your parents are flawed humans just like everyone else, my idealised and childlike image of him is still held-up as the ideal for manhood.
So here is the rousing and heartfelt post about how my dad is still a part of me, even 16 years after his death.
--
Bypassing the obvious fact that I bear a striking resemblance to him, his influence is still felt in my life in many subtle and some unsubtle ways. His death came during important and difficult formative years, not long after the death of my mother, and it possibly scarred me in ways I don't fully understand, but that manifest themselves interestingly.
One very immediate effect is his voice is still present in my mind. It's almost like the voice of my conscience, but separate from that and not heard as often. Most commonly I hear it when I'm feeling guilty about something big, and trying my hardest to block it out and press-on regardless. He is invariably goading me into doing the right thing, when all other faculties seem to have been defeated by my ego. It's almost as if my conscience's last ditch effort is to put the tags on to make me sit up and pay attention. It's easy to imagine someone believing in angels and after-life when the voice of their departed parent is present in their head, and when I was younger I could believe it, in the weaker moments.
Slightly removed from the voice in my head, I was startled recently to hear his voice come out of me directly. I was at a party hosted by some of my good friends who also happen to be breeders. As is usual, the kids tend to push boundaries and cause mischief, but I was witness to some bad misbehaviour that warranted stern words. Almost instinctively I activated some and gave the kid a reprimand, and I was shocked to hear his voice in my own. It gave me a deva-vu flashback to getting yelled at myself when I was a kid, and obviously caught a few others by surprise as well, who started making friendly jibes about already having the dad-voice thing down pat.
Another influence possibly related to this phenomenon lies in the dream-state; this is rarer than the voice thing, but far more impactful, in that I will have very vivid and coherent dreams featuring him. It has occurred, on average, probably about once a year since he passed; but it's more common when in times of crisis, and disappears almost completely when I'm fairly happy and content. These dreams differ markedly from my brain's usual mixed-up fair, which often leaves me with a distinct "WTF" feeling, even when I can identify the elements it has pulled together. These dreams are always visually very clear and colourful, and have a calm and linear feeling of time with a clear theme, but otherwise are as varied and unique as dreams can be. Here's an excerpt from my journal describing one I had in October 1996, not long before I graduated high school, when I was going through a pretty rough patch living alone amongst strangers:
"I just woke up from a dream. It was one of the best dreams in ages. I was graduating from high school, but I was watching the proceedings from a rocky breakwater sitting with dad. And he was telling me all this stuff, most of which I don't remember, but later in the dream it became night, and my best friend came to visit me. She was Hope, but as a merseal. And she told me she was pregnant and had eggs and I was so happy for her. Then dad was standing there, staring up at the full moon, and he was crying. He said "Uh, the lights" trying to excuse the fact that he was crying, and went and sat back down on the breakwater. I went over to him and gave him a hug and said "Noone cares dad", meaning nobody cared that he was crying, it was okay in other words. Then he said that "...it really chilled me to the bone to hear you think that I left you for a better place". Because I thought that for a brief second a few nights ago in Tilly's bed. So I told him I didn't mean it and hugged him harder and the dream faded slowly and I woke up with tears in my eyes, but happy"
I cannot adequately describe how intense the feelings are when associated with these dreams. As I hinted at above, the central premise of abandonment that characterised that dream was dealt with and (I thought) satisfactorily resolved during a quiet moment of sadness lying awake in bed. As if to reinforce this though, I have a dream where he appears in extreme distress (I almost never saw him cry) and speaks to me as if he were present for that moment and could hear my thoughts. The first time this happened, during the transition to post-parental life; I formulated a construct to support the idea that he was still around, possibly in my head, somehow. These ideas stayed with me, in slowly decreasing terms until well into my late-teens.
--
I owe my love of the ocean to him, wholly. He grew up on the beaches of Sydney, trained as a surf lifesaver from the age he could swim, surfed nearly every day and was commended for bravery during a rescue even before he was old enough to patrol a beach. When mum died and we moved over here to live with him, I knew little of the ocean, and didn't even think I liked it that much. This was a travesty to him, and it wasn't long before he was taking us to the beach on nearly any sunny day we could get. He taught me about the ocean, about it's forces and dangers and how to use and ride the swell while mitigating the risks. It was always re-assuring and exciting to look back at the beach and see dad watching me in the water.
When he died, I lost my access to the ocean, both physically and emotionally. Living in a boarding school in Vic Park, you don't get the chance to visit the ocean more than maybe once a semester, so by the time I left school and started living my life, I'd lost the connection to the ocean and to a valuable source of well-being. This changed though, a few years ago when my uncle took my brother and I back to Sydney for a family reunion. He drove around with me and described for me all the featured parts of dad's early life, including the ancestral surfing grounds, Maroubra beach. I felt drawn to the water for the first time since the halcyon days, and I immediately went to find a surf shop and hire a board. The conditions were pretty bad that day, and I was un-fit and out of practice, but something felt right about surfing there. Dad was on my mind constantly, and I felt like I understood him a little more with each passing minute. I exhausted myself in little more than an hour, after only catching about three waves, but I felt amazingly positive about life. This was my oceanic re-birth, a return to the water and the return of a piece of my soul that had been missing for more than a decade.
--
It's impossible for me to sincerely wish that things were different. Since I'm happy with myself and my life as it is now, how could I wish for what's past to change? It would fundamentally change who I am and how I live, and who's to say that change would be for the better?
When I cleaned away all the voodoo and began thinking clearly, what I was left with was some deep psychological scars from a childhood trauma. These are fully integrated into my character, and I would not wish them gone. I came into this way with a blinding realisation that part of me is my dad; he's half my genes, a chunk of my character and I don't half look like him either. The only way I have left to honour him is to live the absolute best life I know how.
Happy Birthday Dad. I miss you.
I still feel like celebrating though, because even though I only knew him as a child and had less than four years living with him, he had and still has a profound effect on who I am today. Since I never went through the adolescent phase of realising your parents are flawed humans just like everyone else, my idealised and childlike image of him is still held-up as the ideal for manhood.
So here is the rousing and heartfelt post about how my dad is still a part of me, even 16 years after his death.
--
Bypassing the obvious fact that I bear a striking resemblance to him, his influence is still felt in my life in many subtle and some unsubtle ways. His death came during important and difficult formative years, not long after the death of my mother, and it possibly scarred me in ways I don't fully understand, but that manifest themselves interestingly.
One very immediate effect is his voice is still present in my mind. It's almost like the voice of my conscience, but separate from that and not heard as often. Most commonly I hear it when I'm feeling guilty about something big, and trying my hardest to block it out and press-on regardless. He is invariably goading me into doing the right thing, when all other faculties seem to have been defeated by my ego. It's almost as if my conscience's last ditch effort is to put the tags on to make me sit up and pay attention. It's easy to imagine someone believing in angels and after-life when the voice of their departed parent is present in their head, and when I was younger I could believe it, in the weaker moments.
Slightly removed from the voice in my head, I was startled recently to hear his voice come out of me directly. I was at a party hosted by some of my good friends who also happen to be breeders. As is usual, the kids tend to push boundaries and cause mischief, but I was witness to some bad misbehaviour that warranted stern words. Almost instinctively I activated some and gave the kid a reprimand, and I was shocked to hear his voice in my own. It gave me a deva-vu flashback to getting yelled at myself when I was a kid, and obviously caught a few others by surprise as well, who started making friendly jibes about already having the dad-voice thing down pat.
Another influence possibly related to this phenomenon lies in the dream-state; this is rarer than the voice thing, but far more impactful, in that I will have very vivid and coherent dreams featuring him. It has occurred, on average, probably about once a year since he passed; but it's more common when in times of crisis, and disappears almost completely when I'm fairly happy and content. These dreams differ markedly from my brain's usual mixed-up fair, which often leaves me with a distinct "WTF" feeling, even when I can identify the elements it has pulled together. These dreams are always visually very clear and colourful, and have a calm and linear feeling of time with a clear theme, but otherwise are as varied and unique as dreams can be. Here's an excerpt from my journal describing one I had in October 1996, not long before I graduated high school, when I was going through a pretty rough patch living alone amongst strangers:
"I just woke up from a dream. It was one of the best dreams in ages. I was graduating from high school, but I was watching the proceedings from a rocky breakwater sitting with dad. And he was telling me all this stuff, most of which I don't remember, but later in the dream it became night, and my best friend came to visit me. She was Hope, but as a merseal. And she told me she was pregnant and had eggs and I was so happy for her. Then dad was standing there, staring up at the full moon, and he was crying. He said "Uh, the lights" trying to excuse the fact that he was crying, and went and sat back down on the breakwater. I went over to him and gave him a hug and said "Noone cares dad", meaning nobody cared that he was crying, it was okay in other words. Then he said that "...it really chilled me to the bone to hear you think that I left you for a better place". Because I thought that for a brief second a few nights ago in Tilly's bed. So I told him I didn't mean it and hugged him harder and the dream faded slowly and I woke up with tears in my eyes, but happy"
I cannot adequately describe how intense the feelings are when associated with these dreams. As I hinted at above, the central premise of abandonment that characterised that dream was dealt with and (I thought) satisfactorily resolved during a quiet moment of sadness lying awake in bed. As if to reinforce this though, I have a dream where he appears in extreme distress (I almost never saw him cry) and speaks to me as if he were present for that moment and could hear my thoughts. The first time this happened, during the transition to post-parental life; I formulated a construct to support the idea that he was still around, possibly in my head, somehow. These ideas stayed with me, in slowly decreasing terms until well into my late-teens.
--
I owe my love of the ocean to him, wholly. He grew up on the beaches of Sydney, trained as a surf lifesaver from the age he could swim, surfed nearly every day and was commended for bravery during a rescue even before he was old enough to patrol a beach. When mum died and we moved over here to live with him, I knew little of the ocean, and didn't even think I liked it that much. This was a travesty to him, and it wasn't long before he was taking us to the beach on nearly any sunny day we could get. He taught me about the ocean, about it's forces and dangers and how to use and ride the swell while mitigating the risks. It was always re-assuring and exciting to look back at the beach and see dad watching me in the water.
When he died, I lost my access to the ocean, both physically and emotionally. Living in a boarding school in Vic Park, you don't get the chance to visit the ocean more than maybe once a semester, so by the time I left school and started living my life, I'd lost the connection to the ocean and to a valuable source of well-being. This changed though, a few years ago when my uncle took my brother and I back to Sydney for a family reunion. He drove around with me and described for me all the featured parts of dad's early life, including the ancestral surfing grounds, Maroubra beach. I felt drawn to the water for the first time since the halcyon days, and I immediately went to find a surf shop and hire a board. The conditions were pretty bad that day, and I was un-fit and out of practice, but something felt right about surfing there. Dad was on my mind constantly, and I felt like I understood him a little more with each passing minute. I exhausted myself in little more than an hour, after only catching about three waves, but I felt amazingly positive about life. This was my oceanic re-birth, a return to the water and the return of a piece of my soul that had been missing for more than a decade.
--
It's impossible for me to sincerely wish that things were different. Since I'm happy with myself and my life as it is now, how could I wish for what's past to change? It would fundamentally change who I am and how I live, and who's to say that change would be for the better?
When I cleaned away all the voodoo and began thinking clearly, what I was left with was some deep psychological scars from a childhood trauma. These are fully integrated into my character, and I would not wish them gone. I came into this way with a blinding realisation that part of me is my dad; he's half my genes, a chunk of my character and I don't half look like him either. The only way I have left to honour him is to live the absolute best life I know how.
Happy Birthday Dad. I miss you.