My dad was far from perfect, but I live by the advice he gave me on his deathbed. It has been 14 years since he passed, yet I can feel his blood coursing through my veins whenever I realize the small ways I am just like him.
This sounds like an old-fashioned, take my mother-in-law type joke, but it is the antithesis of funny: one in five British people would swap their dad for a better model. This is according to a new survey ahead of Father's Day in the UK, which also revealed that one in three pretend they have a better relationship with their dad than they really do. Many admitted they buy Father's Day cards out of obligation rather than love, too.
As a result of this research, online retailer Thortful has launched a campaign called Dad's not perfect, but ... to challenge the stereotype of the Best Dad Ever, with a much more honest range of cards. The company's founder and CEO, Andy Pearce, said they provide a chance for customers to mark Father's Day in a way that reflects their actual relationship, not the one they feel they are supposed to have.
While authenticity is typically to be applauded, and some of the options are a good compromise, others are brutal. They include cards that read Dad, my therapist says thanks for all the business, Happy Father's Day to a stranger with half my DNA, and even the succinct Worst Dad Ever. Surely at that point you would just save your money?
Father's Day has only been a struggle for me since mine died in 2012. He was not perfect, but I was very fortunate. He was a lovely, funny, caring dad, and we had a great relationship. For the first few years after he was gone, that third Sunday in June when everybody else celebrated their fathers was a painful, extremely unnecessary reminder of what I had lost, but at least then I could sit it out. When I had a baby and had to make Father's Day happen for my husband, also a lovely, funny, caring dad, it felt almost perverse.
Thankfully, my dad gave me lots of advice, which I live by to this day. Some talk about regrets on their deathbed, mistakes, opportunities they desperately wish they had not missed. On his, my dad gripped my hand, looked deep into my eyes, and whispered, Set up autopay for the congestion charge. I am regularly grateful I heeded this solid gold guidance and now avoid the hefty fine for forgetting to stump up. Other wisdom was passed down throughout my childhood. I had always heard him saying, Never trust the driver in front of you if they are wearing a hat, but it was not until I was old enough to take the wheel myself that I understood how accurate it was. Do not ask me why, I do not make the rules, I just observe them, unlike all drivers in hats. When someone next cuts you up, tailgates, or performs a wild manoeuvre with no warning or indication, take a proper look at them and I guarantee: chapeau.
My dad also introduced the concept of items being too new to use for an indiscriminate amount of time after purchasing. The idea of immediately putting on a jumper you have just bought or filling a new vase with flowers is clearly positively indecent. You need to allow the objects to acclimatise to their new surroundings, and vice versa. This made so much sense to me I was stunned to discover it was not universal policy, and was openly aghast when a schoolfriend's mum served dinner on plates straight from her shopping bag. Sadly, it is impossible to say whether she consequently changed her ways because, for some mysterious reason, I was never invited round again.
I have inherited my dad's love of cats, potatoes, and neatness. I can practically feel his blood coursing through my veins whenever I straighten a picture hanging askew, or turn a loo roll round so it is correct with the flap hanging over not under, or scream at my family that if they put the bloody thing back in the place it goes they will know where it is the next time they need it. Unpopular as I may be making myself, I love that connection to him, the certainty that this is what he would have wanted.
It will never not suck that my dad is not here any more, that life, let alone Father's Day, has the audacity to carry on without him. In the early, bleakest days of grief I wondered if it really was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, because it did not seem like it. Now, 14 years later, I feel proud and unbelievably lucky to know that unlike the one in five, I would not have swapped my dad for anything.
