My Father, John David Roberts, would have turned 90 today!
Amazing!
I wonder what he would have been like at 90? Would his mind and/or body be failing him or would be lucky enough to still be himself? Would he be living at home with my Mum or would he be living in a nursing home? Would he be content with his life or would he have regrets?
All this pondering also makes me wonder what he was like at 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years of age? What I have discovered over the last few years is that he was an exciting soccer player in his mid-teens; playing for Liverpool in the Zingari League. But this pursuit was cut short by WWII when he enlisted in the 8th Royal Artillery Regiment of the British Army, Number 901837, as a range finder and went off to fight in North Africa. At 25, he returned to English soil having spent three years in a German concentration camp, Stalag IV-C, POW Number 253575, stationed in Bystřice, (now) the Czech Republic. It seems such a young age to already have endured nearly 6 years of physical hardship and emotional torture. I wonder how this affected the boy he was ... and the man he became?
The year he returned home he discovered his high-school sweetheart, and first wife, had died of lead poisoning. He then married for the second time and was blessed with a son in the following January. Four years later he became a single parent and had the responsibility of juggling fatherhood with work commitments and a social life. I imagine this was another turbulent time in his life. What would have been more difficult for him: the war or the reality of living as a single parent?
Apparently his life turned around when he met my mother in his late 40s ... apparently he was happy and in love. They decided to look for a quieter life and settled on a move to Australia. But it wasn't easy. The house had no phone, no mains water and was a kilometre away from shopping facilities. My Father didn't have a permanent job, so needed to walk into town each morning to find out if he had work that day. I was born a few years later and by this stage he had a job at the local Shire. However, the day before my 1st birthday he died unexpectedly of tuberculosis in hospital. He was 52. My mother was about 5 months pregnant with my sister and did not have a car. She never saw his body. What had happened to their dream? Shattered. Although, this seems an understatement. And picking up the pieces? Now that would have been an almost overwhelming task ...
Yet, here we all are today. My brother, my mother, my sister and myself. Each living our own lives. Each with our own families. Each with our own scars. Each with our own dreams. But are we really taking risks by dreaming about the future? Or are we merely living each day just in the hope that it won't be our last?
In this light, living to the age of 90 seems such an extraordinary feat.
Yet my Dad, Raymond John Bell, is nearly 79 years of age and he makes another 10 years seem entirely plausible. He has lived a full life. And he does so with responsibilities for two families, with regrets, with a never-ending to-do list and with a body that "gives him jip!"
Perhaps one shouldn't hold on to the thought of living a long life, but simply to living a full life: mistakes, dreams and all.
