Five Airlines Toffees
The most wonderful father any daughter could hope to have passed away on July 26, 2006. But we lost him much before that. My tribute written about a month after.
It was always five airlines toffees. Everytime he travelled, my father would bring me five toffees — never four, never six, always five. There may have been some significance to that number, but I suspect, that like most traditions, it just happened.
Sometimes he’d come back from trips loaded with gifts — sweets from the best confectioner in town, pretty cardigans, pearl necklaces, books and toys — sometimes, he would just not have found the time to shop. But he never came home without those five airlines toffees.
I started working around the same time he retired, and the tradition was reversed. Now, I was the one who’d bring five airlines toffees everytime I came to visit, and he was the one who’d gleefully polish them off in one sitting.
Parkinson’s started claiming his body, and dementia his mind, but his sweet tooth remained his own. The last few times I visited him, he barely recognised me. But when he saw the toffees, he proudly said, “My daughter gets me these toffees too.”
Last July, I was on a plane winging homewards. I’d just got the news that my father’s heart had finally given up. There was Regret (that I missed seeing him by just four days), Remorse (that I would never again watch him watching my son throw a ball at him), Relief (that he’d finally shed the body and mind that constrained him and could go back to being the man he was meant to be) — but, no tears. How does one cry for the passing on of a man who is not really your father, and who your father would have hated becoming?
After settling in the kid, and putting the baby to breast, I buckled my seat belt and was waiting for the plane to take-off, when the stewardess came around with the tray of airlines toffees. My hands automatically reached out for the tray, then pulled back — never again would I pick five airlines toffees from that tray. The dam burst; tears flowed.
Before deplaning, I asked the stewardess for five airlines toffees.
When we journey to the other world, we are not supposed to take anything with us, but as his ashes floated down the river, my father had something clenched in his fists — five airlines toffees to sustain him on the Journey.
