It is a sad fact of life that children sometimes disappear. So do parents, of course — still, by the time you are 55, you expect your parents to stay put until the Grim Reaper comes scything. My father, however, is missing. At least to me he is, although he lives somewhere in Melbourne — I just cannot discover where.
Dad will be 88 next birthday, and, according to the little trickle of information I do have, has a much impaired memory. Although I'm told he does remember me, his eldest child. I think now that he went missing, in a very real sense, soon after the death of my mother. My parents had known each other for over 53 years, and had been married for 50. My mother died not long after their Golden Wedding.
Five weeks after the funeral, the meats scarcely being cold, Dad met the woman who would become his second wife. His focus then turned away from his offspring, and became fixed on the new woman and her large family. I remember thinking what an irony it was that his favourite play was King Lear, but he had clearly forgotten it, for he protested that his children were not as happy about the match as his wife's eloquent offspring were.
I pointed out to him that we were indeed happy he had started a new life; we, however, were still stuck with our old ones. I also asked him to think about the fact that his wife had been widowed 15 years when they met. Time counts: there is a great difference between 15 years and five weeks.
Time really got the bit between its teeth more than seven years ago, when I flew out from Greece at a day's notice: it was almost certain that Dad was dying after an operation for cancer and two heart attacks. But he didn't die; he just died to me. After brain injury brought on by hypoxia, he became convinced that all I wanted was to lock him in a nursing home, throw away the key, and then make off with his money and property.
The coolness over the phone and face-to-face was almost more than I could bear. My attempts to communicate the way we used to ended in failure, every one. And so I found myself teetering, about to fall into an abyss of grief caused by this