Peter Dever

Memories are funny things. Different people remember things differently, selectively. Memories, the context of a man with dementia, can be painfully fraught, but that doesn’t mean my memories of my father don’t have a place here.

Yes, we all recall his favourite films being The Sting (interestingly a story of con artists) and The Great Escape (speaks for itself). But what about The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, our favourite cinematic parallel for our father, the story of serial fantasist who pictures a more dashing and romantic life for himself away from his dull everyday existence. Another escape artist. The theme of second or double life is salient here as we recall a man who for more than a decade lived a secret life switching between two families, a father ‘away on business’ or ‘spending Christmas with his aging mother’, a man on the end of the phone who it turns out was never where he said he was -- as we discovered when we tried to visit him in Sydney only to meet excuses. We learned (years later) that he’d moved to the Gold Coast.

At his funeral this was presented as his desire to “transform himself”, but such a transformation was only achieved via significant deception involving others. The theme of doubling also features in our memories in other ways, including the cat promised to me but delivered elsewhere: two gifts for the price of one, one daughter left dangling.

It’s great that he is remembered as a champion for others, but it should also be remembered that he was absent, unaware, for most of our achievements, no cheerleading for us.

Kind? Maybe to some. But my last phone call to him ended with him yelling, “Do you know who you’re talking to? I’m your father”, and with that he hung up me. I was 21. Yes, you were my father too.

Posted by Maryanne 26/03/2022