My Father's cardigan

My wife was cleaning out the garage, throwing out stuff that she determined we no longer needed. My wife is like that, she determines and is determined. Anyway, she threw out an old hand broom that I had brought to the house years ago from my parent's house after they had died. It was the broom my mother used to hit me with when I was a kid. I watched her throwing it into the rubbish bin, thinking do I retrieve this or not?

This post was redited on 19/09/2013

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I haven't done much all day. I wanted to do some gardening but I just haven't got around to it yet.

Both my parents have died. My mother in 1995 and my father in November, 2005. I struggle to forgive my mother. She hurt me and although I try to see life through her eyes, I just can't quite accept what she did to me. I was born with hypothyroidism which makes me a cretin. My mother could never look beyond this and never thought I had much potential. Two days before she passed away, I had my last conversation with her. She told me I was a failure. That's my mother's legacy to me. She died before I had begun to look at her differently, before I could reflect on her own life and how she had been raised. My father on the other hand, lived longer and in that time I healed

. When I was a kid he was one of those fathers that always played with you. Football, cricket in the back yard. We used to watch the football every weekend. He would tell us stories about films like Frankenstein and Robin Hood and tell us his World war II stories - always sanitised. Those sorts of things. But he was always a very simple, gentle man. In the teenage years when separation starts, I admit I didn't see him as being much at all. We never talked much, ringing him up to say hello, but never having a conversation with him. A few words at most. Then, you would only see him at Christmas or on his birthday, those days that you had to be there.

He was in hospital for a few months and it was miles away from where I live and anyway, my brother and my sisters visited him, so why should I go every weekend.


And now he's gone and every weekend I wear his cardigan. It's my favourite piece of clothing.