This is the spot. The perfect place.

The final place.

§§§§§§

"Your father died at six forty-five this morning. I thought you'd want to know."

I thought you'd want to know. How cold that sounded. How distant, unfeeling. But the question was: did I want to know? Did I? I held the telephone, staring blindly into the distance, my mind searching for the answer. But surprisingly, I already knew.

Bourbon and tears.

§§§§§§

"Get that snarl out of your voice, girl."

It's not a snarl, dad. I've never snarled. Not at you, nor anyone. It's anger, frustration. It's annoyance. Already I start to walk away; already your voice is distant, lost to me.

"Don't know what the hell you're in such a bloody mood for."

Because I'm being taken for granted. Because the only time you talk to me is to criticise and chastise. Because I'm overlooked, because you never consider my feelings. Because I'm being treated like shit by a shit like you.

Take me with you, I used to plead, mostly to myself, in my head, because I was frightened to articulate the thought, frightened of the rejection I knew would follow. Please let me join in, teach me what you know, please include me in your dreams. But no, you never could: your family wasn't important enough, was it father? I used to love you so much, sitting on your knee, listening to you talk. You would come home, smelling of animals and woodsmoke, and it was so exciting. Oh, such dramatic things you would tell me about the day you'd had, and I would pray for the summer holidays when you could take me with you. Do you remember? I'd order you to promise to take me, and you would agree, with a little laugh. I grew to know what that laugh meant; and I grew to know disappointment.

Even small disappointments, when visited so often, scar the soul. And from such a diet grows resentment; and resentment turns to anger; and anger, when prolonged, is the breeding ground of hatred. So no, I'm not snarling and I'm not in a mood. It's simply that the loss of faith, even when widely presaged, comes suddenly. And acts bitterly.

"You see? No answer. Nothing, nothing at all."

No, dad. No answer. Because I was no longer there.

§§§§§§

My father died last Friday at six forty-five am. Stage four non-small cell lung cancer. Added to which his kidneys packed in and he started expelling waste through his skin. Until it started to fall off. I stopped listening after that. I didn't want to know. I don't want to know that sort of thing. Not about my father. Fathers are indestructible. Even mine, the old bastard.

§§§§§§

Bourbon and tears. The Bourbon and Tears Rag. The saddest tune, the backdrop to mourning. When Jamie died, I played it night and day, my lament for my lost love, each note encapsulating a tear, B minor filling my heart with joy and despair. Jamie was my fiancé, and someone more different from me it would be impossible to find: so quiet, so calm, so determined, he knew what he was going to do with his life. He used to laugh at me. 'You know what you want,' he'd say, 'but you haven't a clue what you're doing.'

I had thought it was Jamie's tune: love, death, Jamie, the Bourbon and Tears Rag. I loved it more than I could say, and yet I never wanted to hear it again.

And so it was with mixed feelings I sensed, in the distance of my mind, those opening bars unfold once more as the news of my father's death was relayed to me. 'Your father died at six forty-five this morning.'. And on it came, unstoppable, unwanted: A, C, C, B, B... The Bourbon and Tears Rag, a hymn to death...

§§§§§§

One year ago, the last time I saw him. The first time in fifteen years.

"Hello dad."

"Hello. You're putting on weight."

"I think it's called ageing, dad."

"Rubbish, look at me. Not an inch of fat."

"Well, that's because your diet is cigarettes and alcohol."

"And how would you know what my diet is? Are you the bloody expert now, after all these years?"

I tried to tell myself there was a twinkle in his eye, levity in his voice, although my father's was not a voice given to levity. I made myself smile. "Yeah, I guess you're right. How are you?"

"Me? I'm fine."

"Yeah, you look it." He looked old. He looked like his own father. He was small, the skin round his neck loose and scrawny, his voice growing reedy and weak. The barrel chest was still there, and the swagger, the 'look-at-me' arrogance, but it was diminished, the lingering product of habituation, a mere echo of expired hauteur. I couldn't believe I had ever been scared of him, nor that my thoughts had been filled with hate for so many years. I was on a mission of reconciliation and, seeing him in the flesh, diminished from the prideful man I had known, I was relieved to be doing so.

The room was dark. Very clean, there was nothing out of place, yet there was no life in it. No soul. It was as if it were a drop-off point, antiseptic like a bus station waiting room. Time hung self-consciously, as though aware of how slowly it was moving, pauses so long that even awkwardness dissipated, silences louder than heartbeats. A single picture was displayed on the wall, of a rabbit, a reminder of his previous occupation - the man who killed rabbits, and deer, and foxes. In the window some seedlings were stretching from the soil in three old mushroom trays, spindly and hopeful, their budding leaves tiny yet out of proportion to the slivers of stalks on which they stood, a fresh green interlude in the beige of my father's existence. His face was mahogony, etched deep with the lines of experience, his eyes dulled, darkly wretched, and his mouth fixed in a rueful smile. I observed him and I wanted to like him, I wanted to care: but I couldn't. The voices kept on at me. It's his own bloody fault. He burned his bridges. Made his bed, now he can lie in it. The deepest emotions seldom need the most articulate expression: emotion itself is enough to carry the sentiment.

"Nice place you've got here."

"Ach, it suits me fine. Nice and private anyway." He hated it. I knew he hated it. It was small, like a cage, while he wanted to march, unhindered, into the distance. He stared at me and his expression told me more than he intended. It always had: only it took me too many years to realise. It was weary, it was chastened, but it was by no means resigned: not him, he would never resign, he was always the same - dissatisfaction led to rebellion, and rebellion kept him fighting.

"Don't suppose you've paid your Council Tax?"

"Don't talk to me about bloody Council Tax. They can put me in the jail before I pay that damned thing."

"Yes well, they probably will." And wouldn't it do us all a favour? But no, stop it, think charitably. He was a sad old man, alone in a dark flat, alone with nothing but memories: there is nothing more harrowing than the sight of a man who hates company but is riven by loneliness.

"What do I care? My time of life? They can do what they want. Bastards - it wouldn't bother me." He looked away, unable to meet my eye. Always the same, dad: just when I begin to feel empathy you open your mouth and blow it away. Me, me, me. 'What do I care? It wouldn't bother me?' But there's more than you, for christ's sake. There's more than you to think about. Don't you think it would bother my mother? Our family? Don't you think? He had always been selfish in a self-destructive way, heedless of the disappointment heaped on us in the process. I didn't want to argue, though, not today. That would be too easy: each of us could slip into familiar garb and begin to bait one another - just as we had, too many years before. But if we were to do that now, what end would it serve?

"Nice picture." He looked blank. I nodded at the wall. "The rabbit. Still shooting?"

My father was a gamekeeper: he made his living from death. I asked him once how many animals he had killed in his life. I've never forgotten the tone of his reply: it elicited neither pride nor satisfaction, nor shock nor disgust. The banality of the response - dry, disinterested - haunted me for years. 'Thirty a day for thirty-odd years, probably. Conservative estimate.' I didn't want to calculate it, but I did - and it amounted to fifty thousand animals, give or take a hare or two.

He stared at me and screwed his eyes, sucking his cigarette and inhaling deeply. I got the feeling he was weighing me up. A spasm crossed his face, instantly creasing his features with a look of sudden pain, and I thought he was about to cough - he had always been a prodigious cougher; but instead he spoke, his voice quiet and slow. "I've killed too many things in my life."

Not for the first time, I had no answer for my father.

§§§§§§

My father and I were estranged sixteen years ago. "Get that snarl out of your voice, girl," was the last thing he said to me. There was no snarl in my voice and I walked out of the house and out of his life that afternoon, determined that if I next saw him the day he died it would be one day too soon. The young can be dogmatic; the old can be proud. It's a difficult combination. Years passed, the feud continued, and neither of us could fashion a way out of it.

How did it come to this? After all, it went far beyond the usual teenage rebellion: disowning a parent is a serious gesture; and keeping it up for fifteen years is persistence personified. Well, I could talk of the adultery, the abandonment of his family, the tart he shacked up with, but that would be too easy. Hell, I could forgive him that: thousands of kids confront that every year; we kick up a fuss, we shout a bit, but grudgingly we accept the new arrangements. And anyway, most of that came afterwards. So no, there's more to it than that.

I was a teenager and full of dreams, my life a mere wish list stretching into the future. I had no plans, only ideas; nothing as firm as ambitions, only hopes. My mind craved experience, the adrenalin of adventure. I dreamed of many things - of writing, travelling, being famous - but lacked the confidence to take the first steps. I would prepare a detailed synopsis of a story but never get round to writing it, afraid it wouldn't be good enough; I would travel the world through books alone, fearing the disappointment of reality.

And what do teenagers need? Especially timid ones? How I craved a kind word, a supportive hug, an interested enquiry. The chance to share was all I wanted, but that was something I never got. My father was a dreamer, too. Not only that, he was the worst kind of dreamer. Most dreamers never amount to nor achieve anything - we are happy to remain in the morass of our imaginings. Some though, the dangerous ones, get bowled along by their own enthusiasm and launch into a new endeavour: my father was such. He invented contraptions which nearly worked, but gave up before he could master them. He converted the greenhouse into a pigeon loft and tried to breed racing pigeons, until the tragi-comic day when he released them for their maiden flight and not a single one returned. Annoyed by our teasing, he stormed out of the house and didn't come back for two days. My brother asked him whether, like his pigeons, he hadn't been able to find his way home either, and he disappeared for another two days. We all found it highly amusing, but I don't laugh at that memory any longer. Later, he bred turkeys until he lost interest and they began to die from neglect; and then he grew show potatoes, until they started to show nothing but the signs of disease. On and on, dreams and plans, a thousand projects started and never one seen to fruition.

I didn't mind the failure: his failures had nothing to do with inability, only inconstancy; but I so wanted to include him in my dreams, and to be allowed into his. Just share, was all I asked, but he couldn't comply. 'Yes, you can get involved,' he'd say impatiently - 'when it's working properly, not until it's ready.' But nothing was ever ready, the inconstant dreamer saw to that: and so I was never included. In the gap, anger festered, hatred settled where love should have blossomed.

§§§§§§

'Your father died at six forty-five this morning.' I stood alone in his room, amid the gloom and the loneliness, the detritus of a life unfulfilled, and I felt - what exactly? There were pitifully few belongings, such slender evidence of a life lived. Some photographs, a pair of binoculars, a bundle of letters: and most of those were arguments with officialdom - he never could stand bureaucracy. That solitary picture remained on the wall, the rabbit staring blankly into the distance, hunched and contented. Some cans of beer, an overflowing ashtray, a bed, unmade, in the corner. There was no sign here of the pain of death, and yet I felt it strongly.

§§§§§§

"How did I get like this?" he asked my sister.

He had stared incredulously at his broken body, at the weeping sores, the ravaged skin, the massive swellings. The humanity of his reaction was overwhelming. He had known what was coming, but its suddenness was an affront to decency, and he struggled to comprehend. Later, my sister wept as she told me and I wept as I listened.

"They'll carry me out of here in a box." My sister knew that to be true but, even then, she couldn't say whether or not my father believed it.

"I've killed too many things in my life." His words echoed, unexpected and unexplained. Regret: the most painful emotion of them all. The sinking knowledge of what is done and cannot be undone.

I've killed some things in my life, too.

§§§§§§

The eve of the funeral, a family gathering, and for the first time in sixteen years I found myself thinking of my father as a person, not the creation I had fashioned as a hook for my hatred. It is easier to hate a concept than a human being, which is why we demonise those we don't understand. I know that now.

I know many things now.

I look in the mirror and see that I am becoming my father, as he became his. The brow is the same, the eyes, the nose. I find myself sitting the way he did, legs crossed, arms folded, hunched into myself. I fashion moments of solitude and realise that the gamekeeper too, alone on the hills for much of his life, relished his. And yet, even in my solitude, I have the germ of loneliness budding in my soul. I dream my dreams still, and try to overcome my fear of failure by sharing with others - with you, my reader - yet I know how hard I find it and how terrified I am of rejection. How I would have hated all my pigeons to fly away.

Sometimes I would rather work and work and work at something until it was perfect.

Sometimes I would prefer to be left alone until I got it right, rather than face humiliation.

Sometimes I would prefer to give up rather than fail to reach my aspiration.

Where, I wonder, tears coursing down my cheek, have I come across such an attitude before?

§§§§§§

I didn't think to hear it again so soon, the Bourbon and Tears Rag; and least of all for him. The notes well up in my mind: B and D, E , F# and A, a pentatonic masterpiece, a mirror of unhappiness. Unbidden, the steady introduction starts off, slow and ponderous, offering no glimpse of the emotion to follow, waiting, like a virgin, for a modest half beat before settling into the first phase. Then it opens, that aching, hopeful, mournful passage, the first four bars rising, the last four falling, then repeating as though to emphasise the point: hope and loss, hope and loss, hope and loss in 2/4 time. It's the natural rhythm of the end of a life.

And on to the second phase - wistful, elegant - the notes calling to me: 'Your father died at si-ix forty-five, at six forty-fi-ive he died.' The words were different once, in a different time, for a different death: 'Oh my darling, darling Jamie, I love you and everything that you do.' Never did doggerel sound so sweet, nor reflect so accurately. Now the words merge into one another, different deaths, different laments, the same emotion. I hear both, simultaneously and alone. This is the moment when it hits, and the words spear my soul.

The third phase - stately, marking space - slows to a drawl, with gentle arpeggios in 4/4 time, creating a neutral state, lulling me into repose before the anguish of the final quarter. It is the catch of your breath before the next sob, the moment when you suspend belief and pretend it hasn't happened, when you try to stop the tracks of time.

It doesn't last - it cannot - and the end draws near, phase four, full of B minor pain and despair. Bourbon and tears, bourbon and tears, tears upon tears, rising, rising; rising until it hits that glorious F#, the saddest, most soulful sound on earth, the release, that moment when the tears descend. And it calls: it calls why, it calls how, it calls no - no - no. Not me. Not him. Not today.

The soundtrack of loss, the Bourbon and Tears Rag. I stand in his room and the song jolts through my frame. I stand in his room, bare of belongings, dark and unloved, and I want not to care, but I know that I do. My father died here. My father died here. The thought echoes in my mind as the music dances by. My father died here.

Bourbon and tears, hopes and fears. Sometimes, a man's hopes aren't strong enough to counter his fears. Sometimes his insecurities are too private to share. Sometimes his self-containment can be mistaken for pride. Sometimes his dreams are too precious to lose.

Finally, too late, I come to understand my father. He was a silly old fool, but a fine enough man, in his way.

§§§§§§

And on, finally, to the Creggan estate, a box of ashes in our possession, the sun our kind companion. Through the trees and down the lane, past the gate and into the field. He used to work this field. That rabbit run there, that would have been perfect for his snare; those trees - an ideal hiding place for a deer. How many blades of grass have been brushed by his leg, how many stones crushed by his boot? Overlooking us, watching respectfully, the Coolme Hill, whose miles he had tramped as the decades turned by. This was where he was happy - in his own head, in his own dreams, unhindered by people, by trite reality. And this, now, is where he will stay.

§§§§§§