Goodnight Dad
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
You may have noticed that it has been a while between posts over the last week. Sadly, just after we arrived back in England I got some devastating news - I was told that my father had passed away unexpectedly. He died of a heart attack at the age of just 54. Maarty & I flew back to NZ immediately & have been here since last Thursday. Dad's funeral was on Monday, and there was a great turnout. As many of you may know, Dad has been a very private person over most of the last 20 years, but in the last 3 or so he has been coming out of his shell & rejoining the world, which has been just amazing. Sadly for me, I have spent most of that time traveling, so did not see just how far he had come. We were back in New Zealand for a month last year, and saw Dad several times, and I am so glad that we did. We walked up to Sharplin Falls, which he considered to be his garden. Although I feel so sad that I have not seen him much in the last couple of years, our traveling has given us so much to talk about - Dad seemed to check this website so regularly & often would post comments just minutes after we posted. I will miss that so much.
I have put the Eulogy that Rachael & I wrote below.
Ze Spring has Sprung
Ze Grass is Gris
I wonder where Ze Boidies is
Ze boid is on Ze wing
But Dat’s Absoid.
I thought Ze wing was on ze Boid.
Dad was a complex character. There were many sides to him – some good, some not so good. But our memories of him are of a caring father, proud of his girls, but he found it difficult to express himself.
As kids we went to visit him every second weekend. When we were little, he would get neighbours to look after us while he worked on the farm, then as we got older he left us to our own devices. If we had not been such well behaved children this probably would have proved disastrous! But as it was, the worst we got up to was probably using windows as doors, eating lots of ice-cream with even more sugar on it, and sitting in front of the heater no matter what time of the year it was.
When we stayed with Dad our diet consisted of whatever food fad Dad was following at the time – whether it be cheese and tomato relish sandwiches, pies, hamburgers, frankfurters, platefuls of mushrooms cooked in butter – and not forgetting the all important ‘vegetables’ – which usually came in a box marked Scorched Almonds or crunchie bars.
Later on he discovered cook books and started experimenting with complicated dishes such as Pastitso, a greek lasagne. So long as he stayed away from the Parmesan cheese they always turned out great.
Most weekends he would entertain us by taking us on picnics. We would regularly go to Sharplin falls or Woolshed creek with a thermos of savaloys and another of tea…when we got older we became lazier and the food changed to squiggle tops and a bottle of coke, bought at the Staveley store on the way.
At Sharplin falls he even named rocks for us –‘Rachael’s Rock’ was usually our picnic stop, where-as ‘Sarah’s Rock’ was a little harder to get to and was often just ‘viewed’ rather than climbed.
One of our favourite times of each visit was our ‘pocket money’ trip to the Staveley Store. Pocket money was $1 each, but somehow he always let us con him into letting us have an extra .20c in order for us to buy curiously strong peppermints.
Most Dads would have well behaved daughters that got on well together. Not Dad, though. He always like a bit of controversy. He liked deliberately provoking us to fight. Mostly we saw through it though, and didn’t fight just to spite him. Thinking back, maybe that was his master plan, being the amateur psychologist he liked to be.
As kids, we used to ask why a lot. I was always a bit careful of asking Dad, though. He would say ‘Well, little red Indian’, pull me onto his lap, and give me a half hour lecture of why. Thanks for trying to educate us in geography, mythology, and family history, Dad. Sorry it didn’t always go in.
Dad was more than just a farmer. To his credit, his bookshelf did have at least 2 farming books, but it also had 4 volumes of mathematics, a couple on Greek and Roman mythology, and at least 50 on Irish family history. He loved the scandals of blue blooded intermarriage, and more recently wartime intrigues. He delighted in telling us about how we were the descendents of Irish nobles, and addressed us as the Great Great Grandnieces of Charlotte Malacina Chichester Clark – or something like that – unfortunately as teenagers we didn’t always appreciate his hard work and thousands of pages of photocopied notes. In fact once, when I showed some promise as the next family historian, he gave me 10 floppy disks of his research on the Ballyhivistock line. I dutifully carried them around for at least 3 or 4 years, always meaning to get around to reading them – until I figured out they had rusted in the mean time. Sorry Dad.
Dad had a unique approach to gardening, and the grass was generally longer on the lawn than in the paddocks. Once, when our aunt Maureen came down, he decided to mow the lawn and he found an African Violet hidden in the grass. Dad was thrilled with his instant flower garden, so he mowed around it and proudly posed for photos.
Dad also had a large garden of snowdrops and daffodils, located conveniently by his front door, and in the house paddock. His favourites were snowdrops, because they signaled the end of winter, and the start of spring. Admittedly he didn’t do too much to care for this favourite garden, but he did fence them off each spring so the sheep couldn’t eat them.
When we were about 11 and 13, Sarah and I decided it was about time we redid the flower beds, so we went shopping and bought some rosebushes. When we got older and stopped going down to the farm for weekends, Dad used to bring us each one of our Roses. To his credit, they’re still there, 14 years later.
In the later years, once we got part time jobs as teenagers, we weren’t able to go to the farm so much – Instead, he would come up to Christchurch to take us out to dinner. We started with Riccarton Mall, then it was Oxford Tce for the last couple of years we even started going to restaurants such as Tiffany’s and Rotherhams. He seemed to really enjoy these nice restaurants, always putting on his smart ‘city’ clothes that we made him buy.
When Maarty and I were back from England last year we were even talking about doing a trip around the vineyards up north. We ran out of time while we were here then, and were going to do it when we got back this year in May. I guess now we will be doing it as a memorial trip.
I was really looking forward to coming back and spending time with you, Dad – getting to know you as a person that was able to have contact wih the outside world. I wanted to make you a granddad, give you the chance to do all the family things you were unable to do with us. I keep picturing the photo of you proudly holding me when I was born and wishing I could have the same photo of you with your first grandchild.
In more recent years, with Sarah overseas, I was starting to take some time to develop my own relationship with Dad – which isn’t as easy as it could be, seeing as Dad didn’t always know how to be Dad, and I didn’t always know how to be daughter. And even though I’m a city girl now, I think I was operating on Country time – I thought I had another 10-20 years to get to know him again. It wasn’t to be.
So I’ve got 3 sets of memories of Dad. The ones when I was young, with rhymes and icecream and picnics and roses. Then years of not knowing what to say. And then the later ones, of having 2 hour conversations on buying rental properties, history, and bluffing my way through talking about farming. I didn’t really know what I was talking about, but Dad never let on that he knew. Dad was clever, and witty, and I wish I knew what the future was going to bring.
Night night, sleep tight
Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
If they do, do not squall
Take a spoon and eat them all.
Goodnight Dad.
posted by Sarah Schaap @ 8:00 pm,
2 Comments:
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At Thursday, 05 April, 2007,
said...
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I cried reading this... He'll always be in your hearts!
A big hug to you and your family,
Fran -
At Friday, 06 April, 2007,
dtc said...
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Hi again,
This is a lovely post for your Dad. The speech was just as touching reading it as hearing it. I hope you are both managing to relax and enjoy your holiday, while having enough energy to do lots of wonderful things. Cant wait to see you again soon.
Happy Easter! Dalice :-)