Dad’s funeral Thank you so much for being here today. To stand before all of you paying tribute to a man I have known all my life is quite something and a pretty hard thing to do. You’ll know him by different names: Robert, Bob, husband and friend, even Bruv, Uncle Bob, Grandpa; he was my Dad. The privilege is a dubious one; not many people actually want to stand in front of a group of people trying to tell them about someone with whom we have all had different relationships. We saw him in different ways; you have your own memories and we’re here to share some of them. I know Dad would want you to hear what he would have called a warts and all story; not the sanitised account that only showed the pretty bits. Not from me, anyway. Let’s begin with an ending. I’m reading from Dad’s book the Presence, a Memoir of Miracles. These are his words: Before I move on to bring an end to this final chapter I feel I should share with you a few thoughts on the value of sharing: that is, on the value of sharing with others not from what we have, though that has its place, but from what we are. I would also ask you to consider that “what we are” might better be stated as “what we have become”. To open our hearts and minds in sharing with others is no small thing. It calls for courage, faith and love; for often we are called upon not to share our knowledge and our strengths, but to expose our vulnerability and pain. My dad was an author, a story teller, a man of tall tales, wide skies, high mountains and rich promises. Although he had been writing for as long as I can remember and wrote many books, it took 25 years of never giving up for O-Books to accept The Presence- a memoir of Miracles. He was about 75 when it became available but what a testimony to tenacity. When we were children, Dad used to promise us a big house in the best area of Nottingham, once he sold his book. There seemed to be nothing he wouldn’t do once he sold his book. I don't think we ever took him seriously, because he was always telling stories. He entertained us with the story about how Christmas pudding was invented; and how haggises ran around Scottish hills, with one set of legs longer than the other so the little critters didn’t fall off the mountain side; and how macaroni got its name. Just in case you’re wondering about the last one, it was a love story between a Scottish laddie called Mac and his one true love Arony. All those and other wild, outlandish, tales were always illustrated with much gusto and windmilling of arms which were at least as entertaining as Dad telling a story. It kept the bottoms of fidgetty children firmly stuck to dining chairs until the grown-ups had finished eating. He showed me how to make paper aeroplanes and nobody has ever shown me how to make one that flies further than dad’s delta winged creations. It was dad who taught me how to play chess and we'd shut ourselves away for hours. Or we played word dice games. He never let me win and thank goodness for that. It made me work hard and try harder. He was as high as a mountain and wide as the sky, was my dad. We both loved those weekend and school holiday walks with Rebel, our black Labrador cross. Dad was tall, dark and handsome, like a movie star. He strode out with purpose and it was hard keeping up with him so I had to take very long steps to stay at his side. Oh, we'd put the world to rights, the two of us. We'd paint fairy tales across the sky with those dreams of a world full of justice and rightness. He was going to write a best-selling book and I would be a leather clad, motorcycling journalist always on hand when the best stories happened. We were what you could have called 'as thick as thieves'. It was as we got older that the darkness set in and the evil shadow of his alcoholism strangled the light from his eyes and rational thought from his mind. My high as a mountain and wide as the sky dad shrivelled away in front of our eyes. I came home from a theatre visit and the house was quiet. He'd gone and with him went the dark, black shadow his illness. For mum, my sister Jane and our two brothers, David and Andrew, at least. That same night, Dad had an experience. These are his words: I had never, ever, asked anyone for help in anything more significant than the trivial, and then only rarely. Now I did and now I meant it. No sooner had the words tottered from my tongue than I was drenched in peace and love. They seemed to enter the top of my head and pass through my body, all the way down to my feet, as though they were liquids poured from a bucket. Everything; al movement, every motion of my mind, stopped in that most exquisitely beautiful of moments. There was no before, no after; time had ceased to exist. All was distilled in the clarity of that stillness. That was not all. In that doorway, sharing the space with my mother and me, I sensed a living and vital presence. For Dad, it began his climb to wholeness and health, sobriety and sanity. It was to be a long journey but he never gave up. He grew back to that high as a mountain and wide as the sky dad I used to have to stride alongside while we were walking and talking and putting the world to rights. He was a deeply spiritual man and fought his demons in a world we can’t buy plane, train or theatre tickets for. His den, home office, pigsty, indoor-man-shed is a library of religious writings mixed with those of Winston Churchill, Arthur Conan Doyle, pop-up story books and a Rupert Bear annual. More than that, it was a place of peace. His physical limitations frustrated and embarrassed him but technology became his joy and it brought him into contact with lost relatives and old friends. He enjoyed the challenge of mastering the many gadgets he acquired. One of the more recent of these was a Kindle that Joan bought for him. He had been reading The Diary of Anne Frank, a book I had, ironically, bought for myself four days earlier. He was a genius, literally; a member of Mensa. Gran and Gramps would have been proud of that. If it had been around back then, imagine what their Facebook status would have been: Our Bob’s in Mensa, he’s a grand lad. But that was the thing about Dad. He took new technologies hostage and made them work for him. He had limited use of his hands so typing became problematic but he had voice recognition software to do it for him. His voice became tired, sometimes but Dad was a problem solver. He programmed the software to recognise all of his voices: lively Bob, tired Bob, barely audible Bob. Dammit, his body wouldn’t work but his mind was totally rebellious and was going down fighting. He found family on the internet and they became so incredibly precious to him. Pol and Col became his sister and brother. Mike was his lost friend from their days in National Service. Is this where I have to tell a funny story? When Dad told me he was going to have to be in a wheelchair, I immediately remembered the scene from the Johnny English ReBorn film and bought dad the DVD. If you haven’t seen the film, you can get it in Asda or on Amazon or something and there’s an amazing bit where Rowan Atkinson is escaping in an electric wheelchair right down Pall Mall and goes under the trailer of an articulated truck. Well, when he rang me to tell me about his holiday and how he was in his electric wheelchair in this big department store and he fell asleep, hit the GO button and went crashing through a perfume counter with much splintering of glass, I had to doubt, just a little bit, the innocence of his story. Dad blamed himself for lots of things and bore a great deal of physical pain as the years progressed but his was a life worth living. He had something worth more than material things. He had a hunger, a thirst, a kind of peaceful greed, if there is such a thing. Dad had ambitions for something that went beyond. It went beyond his physical pain and emotional torment and into the spiritual dimension. It had no creed, no bias or name. He did not know what it was but he called it the Presence. Jews say Shma Yisrael, adonai eloheynu, adonai Echad. Hear, oh Israel: the Eternal One is our God, the Eternal God is One. This is the God my father believed in, had faith in: a God who encompassed all faiths, all religions, all creeds, all ages and was timeless, immeasurable and worldless. His was a God sans frontieres. Without boundaries or limits. My friends. When I think of my dad, I am a child all over again, looking up at my high as a mountain and wide as the sky dad with Rebel on one side and me on the other, striding along at his side. Call him what you like: Robert, Bob, husband and friend, even Bruv, Uncle Bob, Grandpa. He was my dad. I loved him. And Dad, I hope I’ve done yer proud.