Death of the father

Went to the wake for the father of a friend. This is the 4th person I know who's lost a father, and the 3rd one who was 30 or younger when the father died.

This last person who has lost a father was a good friend of mine during secondary school. Let's call him CEO. Funnily enough he has the same name as a high ranking executive from my company who left under a cloud recently. He is one of the rare people I have met who is even weirder than me. We used to be really good friends, although mostly we talked on the phone: the calls lasted around 4 hours on certain occasions*. It's not really unusual for 15 year olds to have plenty to talk about, it was the period that I was also very close to my sister. People of that age will have plenty to find out about life, and plenty to figure out. (Think: Anne Frank's diary is compelling reading not only because it took place under the Nazis wanting to wipe her out, but because it is a document of a life in full flower in spite of the circumstances.) We drifted apart: at 15 it is easy to make a lot of friends, because the ideas that you can discuss are really general. Young people are much more like each other than old people are.

CEO gave me a lot of unconventional ideas, introduced me to unconventional music. Was proud of being an Aquarius (who are known to be unconventional people). Later on we drifted apart: maybe we knew a little too much about each other. He wasn't that comfortable. There are 2 sorts of friends: the sort where you have social activities ("having social activities" is the adult version of "play") with. And the sort that you confide in. Understandably people typically want to keep the 2 separate. Also, we are very different people. He was an artsy fellow. I'm a science-y fellow who managed to cross over to the artsy side once in a while, and I've come to realise that those guys completely do not understand the scientist and engineer culture, but I digress.

Still it was nice to be meeting him again. And a bit of a shock to realise that I was the only guy from sec school he invited. He thought that he was a little embarrassed that he wasn't attending the other peoples' weddings, so he couldn't possibly ask them to the funeral.

Fitzgerald's novel, "Tender is the Night" hinged on the father figure. The difference between the Dick Diver who was a successful psychologist and the one who was an alcoholic wreck was the death of the father, even though not very much was made of it. My sister who is better than me at reading literature spotted that. She was also perceptive enough to say that he's laying all the blame on Nicole, Dick's wife. Something that has resonance because Dick is modelled after F Scott Fitzgerald, whereas Nicole was modelled after Zelda.

I think for most of our lives we are preparing for this moment. There is this saying that you really only grow up when you lose a parent. Well maybe, I've seen people lose a father and still act like a kid but probably that's the exception. Interestingly 2 of the deaths took place very near the weddings, and both after the engagement. The father maybe holding on until you see the kid happily married. The death of a parent ends a process created by the birth of the child. The child takes the baton that the father passes over when the father uh passes on.

And it's interesting to know that you are just a link in a chain that passes back to antiquity. That human civilisation is only around 10000 years old and you are only around 300- 400 links away from a caveman. Somewhere along the line there was a coolie who went around with a manchu queue, or some minor magistrate or some farmer in Swatow. All very interesting.

And you know, I had a near brush because my father was in London on 7/7/05.

* was there anything unusual about our friendship? I don't know, but probably not. I now know that he's gay. He had a few girlfriends, and he is a lady's man, but you know, the people who are best at having female friends are the gay ones.