A quarter century yesterday since our dear Daddy Fent went home.

Home
The Lent before he died, we spoke of heaven. Looking back, I realise he must by then have known that his big old love-filled heart had only so many beats left to beat, but he had kept that to himself. He said he was looking forward to being, as Revelation has it, there by the crystal sea where crowns are cast down before his beloved and constant King. He said he looked forward to a jolly good rest. I thought we were talking about something still a long way off, even though I had long ago realised that an older Dad meant fewer years a daughter in the natural order of things. After his 70th birthday, he said he had had the promised three-score-year-and-ten, so every day now was a gift.
Can it be a home without dogs?
He liked to think that when he got to the pearly gates, he would see them all lined up wagging their tails to greet him, the dogs he had loved. Mr Pooter, Rikki, Peter-the-Pekingese (these three recoloured after years as carefully-labelled, smudged images in monochrome childhood photographs), the one I can’t name that took himself on an adventure by bus and the Dartmouth ferry alone, the other whose name I suddenly realise I’ve forgotten (the one before Nick who died on a road one terrible dark night), old Nick himself (the puppy that stood on the local landlord’s bar to be loved and taken on when the owner emigrated abroad), Holly (born of Nick’s illicit liaison with a pedigree lab, conceived under her owner’s helpless rage), Honeygold (the one yellow puppy of Holly’s black litter of nine so named by my refusal to give up Honey for Goldie), my Tippy (ungovernable Jack Russell chosen because Mum wanted a little dog again after giving up her Hamish because he and Nick didn’t take), Sparky (Tippy’s son whose services Dad would not accept payment for because he was not a pimp), and sweet-natured Bertie plugging the little-dog gap when Tippy and Sparky disappeared one Christmas. Since, the pack has been made complete by Rufus, who was at Dad’s side when he died and outlived him by 8 years.
Home, a place to sing
“Holy holy holy”. We sing the song of heaven and the veil between there and here grows thin as we stand side by side before our God, Saviour and King. Dad sang all the time with a level of gusto that one school-fellow thought we should find embarrassing (oddly, we didn’t). After the funeral, where we sang with gusto though our tears, we continued down the pub with every naughty song Dad ever sang around the house, just the first couple of verses of shanties because he always said he couldn't remember the ruder rest. The sublime and the ridiculous, deliciously combined.
At home in the public house
Jesus said: “in my Father’s house are many mansions”. The vicar preaching at the funeral said it can be read, less lyrically, “in my Father’s homestead are many places of hospitality”. Dad, in response to mention of any town in the country, would recall a pub where, in his 40-odd pre-marriage and family years, he whiled away an otherwise lonely evening or lunchtime. Invariably, the barmaid was called Lulu. Indeed, he met his wife, our Mum, in such a pub. So, I picture a pub in heaven becoming ever more crowded with those I’ve loved. I imagine the drinks they order (either a pint with a handle for Dad or a strong gin) and the conversations they have. His sad surprise to see my cousin and one of my school friends join him far to soon, exclaiming, “my dear!”. The reunion with his brothers. Pressing a drink into each newcomer’s hand.
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Such we are, sentimental beings who each uniquely reinvents those we love with remembrance. I hope my memories have not drifted too far from the truth
The day Dad died, I had the rare comfort of realising nothing had been left unsaid. As the years pass, the sharp edges of grief soften, but the missing grows in a heap of unsaid words. 25 years of life unshared, thoughts and experiences he never knew, beloveds he never met (my husband and niblings), new questions I think up and can never ask, uncheckable stories fading into fragments, the realisation that this pivotal a person was known to me only in such small part. But we who are left to share sometimes contradictory reminiscence agree on this: how bear-hug-loved and squeaky-kiss-accepted he made us feel, and that too is awfully rare.
Here’s to you, Patrick, and the day we meet again.
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But laughing and half-way up to heaven,
With wind and hill and star,
I yet shall keep, before I sleep,
Your Ambarvalia. (Brooke)