Father's day
Amongst all my stresses and worries, I of course think of my father today.
I was 18 when he died and he died at an age I now have passed myself.
The family theory about what killed him is Sellafield radiation. A year or so before he developed a lymphoma, he
was fishing off the Lake District coast and gutting and cleaning fish. I recall his consultant saying his condition was
consistent with receiving a large dose of radiation. Of course you could never prover anything. But it's a hypothesis.
I never got to know my dad very well at all, I was much closer to my mother. I wish he'd lived to tell me his WWII
history. He came from a middle class family in southern Poland and in the position in the family that tradition suggested
training for the priesthood. But the war intervened and there lies the mystery. I know because I have photos that he
was with the Polish free forces in Italy in 1944. But what happened between 39 and 44 ?
Anyway he settled in the UK after the war and eventually became a British citizen. Alas he didn't live to see the
Berlin war come down and Poland join the EU of which he was always a strong proponent.
I'll remember him today as I did my mother about a week ago.
I was 18 when he died and he died at an age I now have passed myself.
The family theory about what killed him is Sellafield radiation. A year or so before he developed a lymphoma, he
was fishing off the Lake District coast and gutting and cleaning fish. I recall his consultant saying his condition was
consistent with receiving a large dose of radiation. Of course you could never prover anything. But it's a hypothesis.
I never got to know my dad very well at all, I was much closer to my mother. I wish he'd lived to tell me his WWII
history. He came from a middle class family in southern Poland and in the position in the family that tradition suggested
training for the priesthood. But the war intervened and there lies the mystery. I know because I have photos that he
was with the Polish free forces in Italy in 1944. But what happened between 39 and 44 ?
Anyway he settled in the UK after the war and eventually became a British citizen. Alas he didn't live to see the
Berlin war come down and Poland join the EU of which he was always a strong proponent.
I'll remember him today as I did my mother about a week ago.