I know we all have regrets about what we could have said, or should have done, with our parents if they are deceased. I have so many, but that really is another topic.

My father was a born salesman, because wherever he went, he loved to tell a story. He had so many. One of his favorites was to claim he had missed a bullet in the then Rhodesian Army. However we at home knew that in fact he had fallen over drunk one night at the dinner table and banged his head on the table on his way down.
He had great presence, and could fill a room, he was tall and good looking and kind of knew what to say to people and when.

As a teen I saw him simply as a “bull shitter” someone who simply made up stories for attention. He also told everyone he was in the Para bats and the Navy. I often wondered how he could do both at once! This lead to great irritation in me, and we often argued about it.

As an adult I cared for him in his latter years. He was a handful, his story telling got worse, and instead of telling him with a huge sigh “To give it up” as I did when younger, I’d just simply ignore him.

A few years after his death, I found a file with plastic pages, and in it were his service records, to the Royal Navy and his time in Singapore as a Para bat. I sat and cried. I wish I could give him a call up there, and tell him how proud I am of him. Maybe only one or two stories were fake, but most it seems were true. Which things do you regret most, and wish you could say now to your late parents?

Topics: life, parents, family, death, mourning, loss, memories, sad