Needs and wants

I first remember night and the back seat of a cream car.

I remember the smell of fries and the silence.

I don't remember faces.

I remember not knowing what my father looked like.

I remember knowing that he was far away but not knowing when he would return.

I remember Daddy at his room on Weekes Trace.

I remember him telling me to put my needs over my wants.

I remember being too young to know or describe what I needed.

I remember times of comfort because daddy provided for my needs and my wants.

I remember forgotten needs.

I remember Daddy remembering that he didn't know why he was given this German name, Waldorf. This confusing name.

I remember him remembering that he had to guess what Wally was short for.

I remember him remembering that he had asked but did not get an answer.

I remember Daddy's discomfort with needing anything from other people.

I remember Daddy's surprise at the generosity of those who loved him.

I remember how hard it was for Daddy to ask for help and accept help.

I remember thinking it was ironic that throat cancer robbed him of his voice. In his last months, when he was in need of so much, his usual silence became less and less of a choice.

I remember when Daddy needed something from you, you could be the last to know.

I remember feeling like the last to know that he needed or wanted to go.

I remember Daddy's struggle with being needed by other people.

I remember Daddy not fully fathoming the needs of those he loved.

I remember when Daddy was in the room he still felt far away. Almost as far away as when he was still faceless to me.

Behind Daddy's aura of joy, warmth and friendliness, was distance.

A distance that came in my humble opinion from not feeling safe enough to express all of his needs and to validate the needs of others.

I remember the stories Daddy told me of himself, his father and his father's father.

The stories made the distance make sense.

I can imagine stories daddy could not tell of ancestors he could not know.

I can imagine those stories would describe distance too.

I remember Daddy would say he didn't eat people but his distance could eat you.

But distance is not an experience for my Daddy alone.

The distance separating we, the enslaved children from our African home lives in all of us as our everlasting inheritance.

I remember a year ago, Daddy telling me that he wanted to depend on himself again when what he needed was to continue to receive support and care.

I remember his heavy mournful sigh as he welcomed the distance back.

The distance is in me too.

I remember how much I didn't remember  about Daddy. How much of his presence my own distance had eaten and tried to swallow up.

But I remember all of him now.

I remember how the distance would silence the both of us.

But I will speak to him now and to all of you now.

I am grateful to everyone who saw through Daddy's silence and met his needs in whatever way you could.

I am grateful to everyone who made him feel safe enough to be needed and received his support and his gifts.

I am grateful to Daddy because I recognise that everything he was able to give to me was a gift that was difficult to give.

Daddy is in a place now, where he will want or need for nothing. Where distance from need and others is no longer his path.

But we who are left behind, we who need need, we should learn something from daddy.

I shall learn one final thing from that memory of Weekes Trace, when Daddy told me to put needs over wants.

I shall remember it as Daddy inviting me to feel safe enough to need him.

I shall remember it as Daddy inviting me to reside in a space where I could need those that I love.

I shall do this for him.

May Daddy rest in peace.