I've only recently given myself permission to grieve my father's death
In clichés about losing a loved one, a common metaphor emerges: a hole in your life where the person once was; a gap in your heart. And while for me that was true to some extent, the absence was already there long before my father died.
I found out my father had died on an afternoon in September, 2004. I was nine years old. A schoolfriend, Aimee, and her mother were at our house when Mum received the call. I remember my mum leading me away from our guests, sitting me down on her bed and closing the door behind her. She didn't need to say anything; I knew.
I cried for a very long time. But the tears stopped eventually, and I spent the afternoon playing with Aimee. No one tells you when you're a child what you're meant to do for the rest of the day after your parent dies. They don't tell you what you're supposed to do for the rest of your life, either.
The decision to continue my play date that day has always made me feel as though I was grieving incorrectly. I don't remember what day in September my dad died. I don't light a candle on his birthday. I stopped engaging with religion around the same time he died. I didn't think I could talk to him in the afterlife, so I didn't try. We didn't talk much when he was alive, either.
My parents met in Johannesburg. My mum grew up on a smallholding in rural Zimbabwe before moving south for university and work. My father was Dutch, a high-school dropout, two decades her senior. Despite his lack of formal qualifications, he'd left his family in the Netherlands and managed to make a name for himself as a sort of renegade businessman in South Africa.
Shortly after I was born, my parents got divorced and my mum returned to Zimbabwe. My father had a sporadic presence in my childhood, occasionally visiting me in Harare, where I'd be accompanied by an adult supervisor (as per a court order). I have a memory of sitting in a car, watching as my dad got into a skirmish with the husband of one woman who'd been tasked with the supervisory role, and eventually landing a punch on his jaw.
I was too young to understand everything, but I was too old to be kept in the dark. Lawyers' meetings. Court dates. Missed maintenance payments. My mum getting arrested. Events I'm still trying to process a decade and a half on, partly by placing the fictional characters in my debut novel, Little Stones, in the same predicaments.
My dad's death was bitter-sweet. I felt profoundly sad but there's no denying it made certain things easier. He was embroiled in more than 50 court cases when he died, from his professional dealings to personal contractors he'd underpaid. As much as it seemed he had a vendetta against his ex-wife, that's just who he was: highly litigious, with a steadfast belief that the world owed him something.
I haven't discovered much about his past, but I know he spent his formative years in a Japanese-run internment camp in what is now Indonesia. I like to think it may provide context for some of the ways he behaved, for his aggression, even if it doesn't excuse it.
There are some things I'll never be able to understand. I was his only child and I was left out of his will; he made a final revision while in hospital. And I have no way of knowing if I was featured in the previous iterations.
When we flew to Johannesburg for the funeral, someone suggested I could choose one of his ties or something from his wardrobe to take home with me. I remember thinking that if he'd wanted me to have a tie, he would have said as much. So, I didn't.
Years ago, I told Mum I wished he were alive, just so I could have another person to go to for advice and support. When I was a teen and she and I fell out over typical adolescent things, I felt isolated; I had no siblings, no second parent. Mum reminded me that even if Dad were alive, he wouldn't necessarily be that person. I felt affronted, but I understood where she was coming from. If your lemon tree dies, you don't lament the loss of apples.
I've only recently given myself permission to grieve, even if my grief is not always connected to my actual dad, who had a disruptive impact on my life. I've decided I'm allowed to feel loss in the abstract: for a father who might have come to school plays, who might have acted as a confidant and sounding board, who might now feel proud of my accomplishments. It's okay to long for something you never had.
Little Stones (UQP) by Elizabeth Kuiper is on sale now.
This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale September 1.