It'll be 21 years ago since my Dad died.
I remember it vividly. I got into work to find a message to ring my Mum urgently. She told me he'd had a massive cardiac infarction and died at 9.30 that morning. I phoned HL and raced up the motorway to make sure my Mum was OK. My brother Tim and Mum's sister and her husband were with her.
Later that day a young couple whom I'd never met came to visit my Mum. They were grief stricken and verbally attacked my brother and I for having "left the truth". Wow. Tim and I went down the pub to talk things over.
There was no funeral as such. Some of the UK brothers had made a pact amongst themselves that when they died, a talk in the KH would be adequate. However no coffin would be present. It wasn't present and it wasn't good enough.
So I remember my Dad the best way that I can.
He was born in 1921 in Bolton, Manchester, 2 months premature and incredibly lucky to have survived back then. At age 9 he contacted diptheria and survived that too.
When WW2 broke out he enlisted in the RAF as soon as he was old enough. He was promptly sent overseas to be taught how to fly by the Americans in Georgia. Upon his return he was attached to 101 Squadron where he flew 43 bombing raids in Lancasters as a bomb-aimer.
In 1944, my Mum had her first child that died when he was 7 days old. My Dad was given compassionate leave and his crew were shot down that very same night without him being on board.
I arrived in 1946. Dad was still in the RAF and learning air traffic control for when he was demobbed. When I was 7 years old we moved near to Heathrow, London where he worked for the Ministry of Aviation.
Soon after we moved, the witnesses came along and Dad grabbed at it hook, line and sinker. He told me later that he had a profound sense of blood-guilt. I loathed our new religion and would play up every time that I was dragged along to another meeting. My Dad was a very kindly man but also very talented in a multi-faceted kind of way.He soon made headway and became a PO in 1958, the same year that my brother arrived, just 4 years after he was baptised.
He stayed in air-traffic control, and later, when he offered his services to the WT to "serve where the need was great", stipulated that he would go anywhere so long as there was an airport close by so that he could still work.
With the coming of 1975, he sold his house and gave up his job to pioneer full time in the short period that was left. He then made a modest income from selling bar and sports equipment to pub owners. He did this almost up until the day that he died in 1984.
He was a good man. He defied the Matlock JC on several occasions so that DF'ings didn't occur. He really believed that he was "in the truth". He drank double Carlsberg Specials with a Southern Comfort chaser, loved Beethoven, played Glen Miller on the piano, never missed Match of the Day, cheered for Bolton Wanderers and adored my Mum to bits.
The month before he died, still a PO, he took me out for a drink, gave me hug and told me I would always be his son no matter that I was DF'd.
He was a great fella and I miss him.
Englishman.