To Ronnie James Oldfield, with thanks for being my Dad.
St. Ignatius
of Loyola reportedly said ...“Give me a
child for his first seven years and I will give you the man.”
Dad was born
the depression; they must have been hard times for his parents. No work and no money to feed a young
family. His mother began entertaining
men while his father was out trying to earn a living.
Dad has horrendous
memories of that period of his life that have left their scars on the man he
was to become. He remembered afternoons
and mornings spent locked in a cupboard by the strangers that visited his home,
often with threats of violence if he told his father what his mother had been
doing.
But his
father did find out. Coming home early
he caught my grandmother with a ‘friend’.
Dad saw his mother stab his father
with a kitchen knife and then running away, leaving his father for dead and Dad
and his younger sister with the body of their father.
My Grandfather
did survive but I don’t think he ever really got over what happened that night.
He was not able to look after his three
children, so Grandfather, Dad and his two sisters Elsie and Yvonne were taken
in by his grandparents. His grandmother willingly
caring for the two girls but telling Dad he was there only because it was her
‘Christian duty’ to do so. Never wanted.
Rejected by his mother. These
early years as I have said, left
lasting scars on Dad.
Grandfather
was now an alcoholic; drinking his wages on a Friday night and coming home
drunk to give Dad lessons in being a man.
He would get Dad in a corner and demand he put up his fists and fight
him. Dad never could bring himself to
hit his father.
But he did
learn two lessons ... never hit someone weaker than you ... and how to fight, and
that is just what Dad did at school. Dad
fought but he never picked on anyone smaller than himself as he saw that as
cowardice, always someone bigger and never any one weaker than himself. As a result Dad seemed to have spent most of
his school years standing outside the teacher’s office waiting for the
cane.
He told of
one year picking on a bigger new boy the first day back at school;
unfortunately this time Dad really did pick the wrong student. The new boy was his new teacher’s son. The way dad told the story was with him
spending the rest of his schooling getting ‘six of the best’ on each hand every
hour of the school day.
Poor Dad, he
really didn’t like teachers at all but ended up with two daughters, countless
in-laws and now grandchildren who are teachers.
Not
surprisingly Dad didn’t see he had much future as an academic and left school
around this time. His employment plans
involved giving someone he knew all the money he had to get him a gun. Fortunately whoever that was ‘ripped’ Dad off
and took the money, but never gave Dad a gun.
Dad did have
better memories of his childhood. One
very profound memory was of his grandmother reading the Bible aloud. The passage was from St. John’s gospel that Sandra
has just read us, which speaks of someone going to prepare a room just for
him.
Dad never
had a proper bedroom, instead his bed was in a hallway connecting the rest of
the house with the kitchen, the backdoor, the pantry at one end, and the
bathroom at the other and all his few processions kept in a box under the bed.
Although Dad
did not understand what the passage was about it impressed him hearing of
someone who loved him and was building a bedroom just for him, something Dad
longed for.
Last Sunday
I was in this church with Mum and Clive spoke about David and Bathsheba, a
story of adultery and murder ... echoes of Dad’s own story. Dad was damaged by the events of his
childhood. He spent most of his life
believing if people knew who he really was that they would think he was
unlovable. He was deeply scarred by the
events of his childhood.
Dad’s life
really could have ended in violence and another tragedy but fortunately he met
two people who loved him unconditionally; Mum and Jesus. God sees through the
walls we can all build around ourselves in an attempt to protect ourselves from
being hurt. God sees our real heart and
I believe saw the little boy who had a great capacity to love and was loveable,
who had real compassion to care for those weaker than himself; the little boy
that Dad might have been if his life had been different.
With Mum’s
love and God’s healing grace Dad’s adult life became very different from his
childhood. Mum and Dad built a life and home
together that was loving and nurturing, a home and family which my sisters and
I could not have wanted any different.
Last
Sunday’s services finished with the familiar words I say every Sunday at the
communion service,“We do this until he
returns”.
After saying
those words this week I took Mum’s hand and said to her, “Dad is in heaven now and at last enjoying perfect communion with God”.
And I saw Dad there as that little boy he might
have been, taking delight in a room of his own built for him with loving hands
by the master carpenter, Jesus.
