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You were 25 before I realised you existed. My wife of 20 years and I were in Edinburgh, where I grew up, to attend a funeral. There, a woman introduced herself as E, a friend of N, who was briefly my girlfriend in 1976, before I moved to England. Did I know, E asked with undisguised hostility, that soon after we’d split N had realised she was pregnant and later had a baby boy?
The news left me – and my wife – reeling. To learn that someone I’d known nothing about might be my son took my breath away. I asked E why N had never told me she was pregnant, or included me in her child’s life. Because I’d left Scotland, she said, and N had been too hurt by the end of our relationship.
As I talked to E, I felt sick (and felt worse when she told me N had died years before) but also excited. My wife looked withdrawn. E promised to ask if you would like to meet me and a week later I received her email saying that you would. Within days I was back in Edinburgh, anxiously scanning the cafe where we had agreed to meet.
I’d planned to ask if you’d be willing to undergo a DNA test, but the second I saw you I knew it was unnecessary. You are the spitting image of my late father as a young man. Seeing you took my breath away, and looking now at the couple of photos I have of you has the same effect.
As we got to know each other in the months that followed, we pieced together our pasts. I learned you had been in the navy until a medical condition (which runs in my family) forced you to leave. You learned that my wife and I have a daughter, then aged 10.
Perhaps if we’d dug a little deeper into each other’s history, we’d have been forearmed. But even as you began to pay visits to our house, even as your half-sister grew to love you, and as I started to become used to the idea of this tall, shy, wry man being my son, things began to fracture. My wife couldn’t accept your sudden arrival into her family. To you, her hostility must have seemed irrational. I should have told you that in 1983 we’d had a baby born dead, that she’d recovered from his loss, and that her reaction to you was the unfair but primal response that you were the “wrong son”.
I finally pieced together what E hadn’t told me – that your mother had killed herself, that you, aged 12, had found her hanging, and that in the absence of a father had lived out your childhood in care. You don’t blame me for that, but guilt engulfs me: I used N for sex, discarded her and left both of you in prolonged turmoil.
Because I can’t look at you without seeing ghosts (of my stillborn son, of your mother, of my dad), it seemed like the easier choice when my wife broke down and told me she couldn’t cope with having you in our lives, to end all contact. But now I’m haunted again, by your distressed dignity as I told you, by how achingly I miss you, by my daughter asking where her brother has gone. I damaged your childhood by my absence, and your adult life by my rejection. I hope you hate me, but I suspect you’ll blame yourself instead.
I want you to know that you’re a wonderful person, and none of this is your fault. E told you my name when you turned 16; you could have looked for me but, you said, you didn’t want to intrude in any new family I might have. Showing no such restraint, I blundered into your life and blundered out again.
I am so sorry. I miss you, and mourn the missed years of your life. You are a son any man could be proud of but I don’t deserve to be your dad. With love and regret, Anonymous
Well, my darling man, last Thursday we heard the news. The haematologist looked so stricken when he gave us the six-month deadline that neither of us felt we could react or cry then and there, for fear of upsetting him more. You had to drive me, not for the first time, home through the rain and London traffic. We’ve shared a lot of journeys, my love – when I was your “groupie” and used to go all over the country to your gigs; travelling to Ireland to meet up with you for wonderful, passionate weekends.
We met and had no intention of getting married, let alone having children. Yet when it’s right, it’s right and you were the one for me, and it seems I was the one for you.
Our wedding was beautiful, and we promised in a very traditional way to love each other in sickness and in health. How blithely we made those promises. If anyone in my mind was going to be ill, it would be you. I was the peasant stock, never sick, non-smoking, healthy-eating, less stressful job person. You, at the time, smoked 40 a day and were wound so tightly I could have pinged you like a banjo. We made the vows – “in sickness and in health” –but you, the 40 smokes a day musician, can’t have imagined you would end up doing so much of the caring. After three caesareans, meningitis and now this untreatable lymphoma – you haven’t really had the better side of the bargain.
I haven’t been lucky with the statistics, but I was lucky in love. I have no regrets, except a deep sorrow that I am leaving you. Not on your own, of course, but with our brood of three: 10, seven and three. And with my gaggle of friends, who I’m sure will be pestering you for the next year, at least. No amount of positive thinking on my part, though, will change the fact that it is going to be bloody hard, and for that I am sorry. You don’t have the same belief in a life after death as I do. It makes me smile now because the love I feel for you is so intense at times that I know there is no way it won’t remain with you in some form or other.
Our rows have been as incandescent as our love; Celtic hyperbole meeting English stubbornness can lead to entrenched arguments. Think of the battle of the Boyne, add a bit more, and that would describe our fights accurately. Why is it only now that I’m understanding why and how we would reach that point?
When your hand slips over my waist in one of the sleepless nights that seem to be the norm at the moment, I feel like I will never die. How could I when I’m anchored like that by the weight of your arm?
I’m still hoping for a miracle, talking to the tumour on a daily basis. At the same time, I know I’ve had my miracle already and it was meeting you, having our children and the never dull 10 years with you. You are a man in a million, you are my man, my husband.
Your wife
:shock:
thank god im not the oldest here :lol:
:shock:
Why howdy Miss Jen will you be in the silver dollar saloon tonight for a game of craps.
howdy 8)
I would like to see it Poli, maybe someone will take me one day.
Im in the middle of “confessions of a medium” by anonymous, maybe he was greek.I have to say at the moment that the horse under the author doesnt quite have the legs for the journey,but maybe it will pick up.
@pepsi wrote:
@a certain sadness wrote:
@pepsi wrote:
Has someone being reading The People’s Friend ? :(
Honestly … A certain … This can’t all be about you ? Can it ? :shock:
No pepsi my life is too boring for it to be about me, they are just letters from real people.
Lol@Peoples friend
Ahh! Certain… ok I take it you’re male ! Interesting post the last one you made ..
“It is perfectly natural for a woman whose husband has committed adulterly to want to blame the other woman, since naturally she would prefer to believe that her husband has been ‘led astray’ rather than deliberately gone after another woman. However, from what I remember of married men when I was young, there are plenty who will go after other women without any encouragement at all.”
Please keep posting ! :shock: :D
Are you saying men stray Pepsi? nah never :lol:
