George Henson Collier – A Slight Return
Today marks the 7th anniversary of my Dad’s death. I don’t know what drugs they put into his body before he died but under it all he was desperately trying to communicate. When he finally went my head was very close to his mouth, I felt the last breath leave his body. This was a surprisingly serene and beautiful moment.
George Collier was not always serene. Far from it. He was a man on edge, a man ready for a fight. Sometimes to the point of being intolerable. I don’t know exactly what pain precipitated his seeming hostility to the world around him. He had no filters on the way he related to others.
We moved to East Bentleigh when I was 11 years old. He would have been 40 by then. Still a young man by today’s standards but from my perception he had given up his friendships to move to “the promised land”. I never really knew my Dad to have friends. Maybe he did and I just didn’t know about them. Shit, he must have been so lonely. When he was younger he had his drinking buddies at the Balaclava Hotel. Maybe that’s just what they were, drinking buddies but not confidantes. Old Leo, Johnny Johnson, Billy. Smelly men letting off steam in the crowded public bar.
He must have been trapped with his own thoughts. I’m pretty certain that he didn’t talk to my Mum about his feelings, he certainly didn’t talk to me. It was the 1960’s, the decade that the generation gap became wider. The idea of having an intimate conversation with your own father was an alien one to me.
Maybe decades later I have fooled myself into thinking that I missed out on something. Maybe I could have helped him by offering an ear, by showing some interest in his feelings and aspirations but I simply didn’t think of doing it. He was somebody to keep secrets from. How sad is that?
I loved him as a son loves his father. I was never close to him like I tried to be with my own children but then again I was pretty damn self possessed and possibly even selfish.
As the decades moved on we tried to talk but never quite scraped the surface enough to get to know each other apart from one day a few days before he died when he opened up and just let the raw emotion gush out. I’m so pleased that I experienced that moment of vulnerability. I’m so pleased that he felt that he could trust me enough to say the things that he did.
He’s gone now. Maybe I am wise enough after a long life of my own to believe that we could have developed a closeness that never manifested during a lifetime together. After all I had 63 years to try harder. But I didn’t.
His memories and secrets went with him. He didn’t leave any written words to peruse. What you got was what you saw.
I hope you are on a safe journey George Collier. I feel a quiet confidence that you are still searching for friendship, wisdom, adventure and hope somewhere in the universe. I hope that in whatever form you are that you have a hint of a memory of me every now and again. Not necessarily a conscious memory but a sort of fleeting deja vu moment.
It’s funny. For a moment then I could feel you existing somewhere. Not your body. It wore out seven years ago after 90 years of hard work and abuse. I could sense your essence and felt a moment of connection that I hope you felt as well.
