You’re man of the house now

Almost immediately after my dad’s passing there was no end of people coming up to me proclaiming: “you’re the man of the house now, Roy. Look after your mum”. I’m not exaggerating – everyone was approaching me and telling me the same thing, be it family, friends, strangers…

Well, saying that is all well and good, but what was a 10 year-old boy meant to actually do as the man of the house? Going out to work was certainly out of the question. Being told I was man of the house meant that I couldn’t exactly ask these same people what I was meant to do – that would mean openly declaring that I’m not quite the man they thought I was – wouldn’t it? Maybe being man of the house means being able to make your decisions for the good of everyone else? I had no idea if that was true or not but that’s what I went with, with a little bit of what’s good for me. I guess with the power of being man of house also brings with it a feeling of being overly confident (or pretending to be) in ones own abilities? The problem with power is that it’s very hard to give up. Also, power, given to a boy of ten with zero experience is only going to lead to one thing: “winging it” or failure. Power is something I realised through life as something that’s not quite absolute; let me explain:

you’re given power; you use that power but not have the confidence to back-up reasoning for decisions made; you never quite have the full knowledge of the power given; you constantly live in fear of losing that power; you will eventually have that power taken away; you soon realise afterwards that you never really had any power anyway; there’s always someone else you report to who’s “the man” and that they wield the power; many people above them have more power.

One of the first decisions I made as “man of the house” was a few days before my dad’s funeral; I was asked whether I’d want to see my dad at the funeral parlour before he was laid to rest. The last image I had of my dad was pretty haunting and I desperately wanted that changed – that was my one and only riding decision on why I responded with a (enthusiastic?) yes!

In fact, I was asked the question several times – a few times leading up to the funeral and a few more on the actual day at the wake. Each time my response was the same; a few times I was warned about how seeing my dad lying there like that is probably not what’s best for me, that I should use my happy memories of my dad to remember him. If only they knew – if only I wasn’t man of house and I could maybe explain what my last memory of my dad actually was!

Deep down I knew that the decision of whether I could see my dad one final time would be taken away from me – heck, not even I was sure it would be the right thing to do, but who would know the right thing in these circumstances?

It’s the day of the funeral and my fears were realised when I came downstairs to find a good chunk of the congregation weren’t around. Asking around where my mum, grandad and uncle Alan were I eventually had someone blurt out “they’re at the funeral parlour to say their last goodbyes”. Absolute arseholes, the lot of them – I’m man of the house, I was asked what I wanted to do, I chose what I wanted to do, and they betray me by fucking off and purposely leaving me behind and go against my own personal wishes. If I sound bitter it’s because I was – and still am if I’m honest. It wasn’t their decision to make on my behalf! Especially after giving me the choice in the first place!

The whole day was a typical sombre affair. I don’t remember too much but I do remember the local Play Centre (youth centre) had done a whip-round and came up with nearly £50 for my mum and had dropped it off that morning. They’d done a pretty good job at hiding that from me because I’d been at the Play Centre a few times that week and never saw or heard anything about it.

One of the most hardest parts of the day was the burial. I was up-front with my mum with a perfect view down of the 6-foot deep hole my dad was lowered into. That got me; it got me hard. It’s not just a metaphor for being final – it actually is final. Your dad is inside this wooden box, lowered into the ground, soil placed over that, …and that’s it – never to be seen again.

But what if this was all a mistake?! What if the doctors were wrong and my dad was alive, stuck in the coffin unable to breathe? What if he was only asleep and he needed waking up? I can wake him up!

What if I jump into the hole, pull the lid of my dad’s coffin and rescue him!

It’s a thought which seriously went through my mind throughout the whole time and coffins take some time to be lowered inot the ground! Even to this day I’ve no idea how only the tinciest-whinciest voice in the back of my head managed to stop me from jumping down there with him. The urge and desperation to do it though was just so overwhelming. So much so that I learnt from that day onwards to never be up-close at the grave of any funeral (and I’ve been to more than my fair share in my lifetime so far!)

Back at the house and people start to leave and head off home. Included in that was my Uncle Alan. Before he left he pulled me aside:

“Don’t lose touch; we’re still your family; we’re still here for you, whenever you need us. And remember: you’re man of the house now, no matter who might come along in the future”.

It’s fair to say my Uncle Alan was a pretty wise man: there were to be new men of the house; and through my mum’s “well, they never ring us, so I’m not ringing them” childish mentality, we did lose contact. I did try but then the whole DCR thing came about and I somehow lost the meaning of family. I’m sorry to everyone on the Davis side of the family – it wasn’t you, it was me.