A Welsh Monk Helped Me Navigate My First Father’s Day Without My Dad
It’s Father’s Day and I am walking through my hometown, feeling bereft and surly, like a teenager. I am in Derby to do administrative tasks relating to my dad’s death, and I don’t want any of this to be happening. The worst thing is that when my dad died, I was taking a break from him. Our last interaction was him reading my oddly formal email, asking for space. I was working through some tough stuff from my adolescence, and I didn’t know how to talk with him. He respected my request. The coolness of this last moment kills me.
But I was angry with him. My teen years were traumatic and lonely, and they crowd my memory as I walk these familiar streets.
There is the pub I used to day-drink in. There is the nightclub I blacked out in.
I remember inhabiting this body back then and knowing absolutely nothing that could help me live a good life. Remembering the wilderness years of my teens makes me feel angry with my parents. Where were they? Why weren’t they paying attention? How did they leave me so clueless and vulnerable at that crucial time?
Since my dad died, I switch between defending myself for asking for space and agonising over it.
“‘Scuse me, Miss,” a hand waving a book reaches into my peripheral view, and I glance over to see a young white man with a shaved head and wooden beads around his neck.
“I have to be somewhere, what is it you want?” I say, open to giving money so long as I don’t have to engage.
“I’m a Welsh monk,” he says, and I feel a pinprick of light pierce the gloom surrounding me. I try to extinguish it.
“My dad’s dead and I have to sort stuff at his house, so can you just tell me what you need?” I say in a monotone, feeling half-dead myself.
The Welsh monk is not deterred.
“It’s not the same,” he says, “but my granddad died, and it was like…” He clutches at his heart, and I feel grief rush through my sinuses. I hold my breath and nod.
“Yeah, it’s like a wrench,” I say. “And the world’s not the same.”
The corners of my lips are turning down, and it’s difficult to talk. My jaw aches.
He opens one of the books in his hands and holds it out. “This really helped me,” he says, and I look at a line drawing of differently aged humans from newborn to elderly, their consciousness shown as moving through them and then beyond.
“Your dad’s body has gone — it was temporary — but he’s still here, his essence,” he says, and I want to lie down in the street and cry. I clench the muscles in my throat and bum until my jaw feels like it is inside a vice.
I remember walking through town with my dad, how he would park ten minutes away so he didn’t have to pay for parking.
I remember how he taught me to leave my Christmas shopping until Christmas eve and how he would get all his presents from the Pound Shop and the Works.
I remember him bringing me to shop at Tammy Girl and how it felt like bringing a walrus inside.
“How do you come to believe that, though?” I ask. “I’ve tried meditating and prayer, but…” I shrug. But what? I can't be arsed anymore? Is that the end of the sentence?
“It’s a practice,” he says, reaching in his rucksack and bringing out another book: The Science of Self-Realization. “You have to keep putting the action in. I’m reading this book with my father and it’s all about this.”
“Can I buy that book?” I ask, and he smiles.
“Of course!”
I take the book and pay twice the cost of it because his openness in the face of my closedness has reminded me that the world can be light and wondrous, that the idea of god, whatever it means to you, can offer a way out of the prison of the self.
By now I have taken my headphones out, and I am smiling, and talking about my meager attempts at spirituality. The Welsh monk is called Ben and he has a podcast. His temple is in Cardiff and he writes the address on the Welsh Yogis Podcast card he has just given me, and I promise to visit.
Walking on, the city looks different. I remember when I had my book launch here, how all my friends and family came out to see me, how my hand ached from signing my name and how my face ached from smiling. My dad took the promotional poster with my picture home under his arm.
After a grueling session of Dad’s death related admin, I have a takeaway with my brother and his family and we watch a sweet film that makes us all laugh. He drops me home, and I tell him I’ll be thinking of him on Father’s Day, that I might give him a ring. We hug.
In my hotel room, I read my new book.
“There are two ways of associating with the spiritual master: through his physical presence (vapur) and through his instructions (vānī). Sometimes we can associate with the spiritual master through his physical presence and sometimes not, but we can always associate with him through his instructions.” — The Science of Self-Realisation
I switch out spiritual master for dad, and reflect on what he taught me. Not the lessons I’ve had to unlearn — drinking, self-neglect, prejudice — but the useful lessons: appreciating simplicity, noticing birds, observing nature.
My dad taught me unhelpful things and he taught me wonderful things. He was kind, funny, practical, and imperfect. He didn’t always understand me and I didn’t always understand him. And we adored each other.
If you are struggling without your father today, for whatever reason, then you are not alone. It’s painful to be surrounded by celebration when you are feeling bereft, and familial relationships are complicated. Some of us don’t get dads who stick around or dads who are capable of gentleness. Some of us have to find father figures outside of our families, and that can be just as beautiful as the real thing. It isn’t possible to avoid the darkness, but it is possible to look towards the light.
Your father brought you into the world. That was his gift to you. If he couldn’t do more than that, then find the ones who can. Learn to father yourself. Give yourself everything that you wish he could have given you. Remember that the universe is your true father. And it wants you to be happy. Remember to look at the sky.
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Chelsey Flood is the author of Infinite Sky and Nightwanderers and a lecturer in creative writing at Falmouth University. She writes about freedom, addiction, nature and love, and is working on a non-fiction book about getting sober and a new YA novel.
She also has an illustrated newsletter about Autism.