Halfway to 70

 Halfway to 70

Today is my 35^th birthday. I didn’t have any sense until I drank myself sober on my 20^th birthday. As I threw up in a nightclub toilet, I experienced a moment of crystal like clarity. I realised that the best I could hope for would be to live to 100 years old and that at 20 one fifth of my life was already over. Furthermore, I realised that by 25 that figure would leap from a fifth to a quarter and by the time I’m 30 almost one third of my life would be gone.

I didn’t like who I was or where my life was heading, so decided to walk out of that nightclub and never look back. That choice stemming from that single moment of poignant self-reflection is what led to me putting down roots of my own.

It’s been 15 years since that night, so now seems like an appropriate time for further reflection. This year I had my 1^st article commissioned by a prominent publication. The kind of platform that can easily launch a career. However, things became complicated when I was asked to get my mothers consent prior to publication.

This was problematic in many ways because my mother and I have been estranged for most of my life. Just because she’s still alive and we share a surname the publication felt they needed legal protection against potential libel.

Although I understood the publications position, having to ask for consent felt like it undermined all the progress I’ve made absent any parental support. This opened my eyes to how estrangement can deny people ownership of their own experience especially if they don’t already have an established following and the uncompromising support of their publisher like Dylan Farrow and NY Times etc.

In the end I decided not to ask for consent, which meant abandoning any hope of publication via this prominent platform. I didn’t think opening that can of worms and inviting chaos back into my life was worth compromising the stability I’ve maintained for the majority of the last 15 years.

The following is the unpublished article in its entirety.

Fatherless Fathers

My mother had me when she was 16, leaving me to be raised singlehandedly by my grandmother, Theresa. My grandmother worked as a cleaner while renting out spare rooms just to put food on the table.

I was initially brought up believing that my grandmother was my mother, and my mother, Michelle, was my sister. My earliest memory of Michelle involves me being stuck in the corner of a room as she clutched my baby sister in one arm whilst waving a chef’s knife at my sister’s father with the other all because he’d wanted to take my sister to his mothers. It wasn’t until I started school, aged 4, that I began realising my mother looked so much older than all the other mothers and eventually began asking about my father. Soon after my grandmother explained who my mother really was, but it was difficult for a child to process so I continued calling my grandmother my mother and only knew my actual mother as Michelle.

Before the age of 10 my grandmother told me that my father went for a DNA test which she had begrudgingly paid for. DNA testing was an expensive process in the late 80s which required travelling to Dublin. My grandmother told me that my father sent a friend in his place so that the test inevitably came back negative, and his family moved away before I was even old enough to walk. I spent years of my childhood searching for any trace of the man I believed to be my father including going to the high school he and my mother attended, to see if they had any year books or class photos, but it was just the first in a series of a dead ends.

When my mother left, she was attempting to do what my grandmother had done almost fifty years earlier by moving to England for better job opportunities so that she could send money home to the family. But my mother quickly found herself in a vulnerable position living on the streets begging for change. I was still a toddler, and my mother was almost 19 when she met and married a Moroccan man named Mostafa. But it was really just a sham concocted for him to obtain a British passport. He naively fell in love and wanted to make a go of the marriage. Up until that point it had been a mutually beneficial arrangement which my mother had been financially compensated. However, my mother didn’t feel the same way about Mostafa, and they went through a quick but bitter divorce after less than a couple of years together.

Despite this, he honoured his commitment to fatherhood by regularly coming to visit me in Ireland and the few times I ever visited my mother as a child I would spend half my time with him. He’d take me to work with him as he drove the No.51 bus from Woolwich to Orpington and took me to the London Eye or rather the ‘Millennium Wheel’ as it was called back then. We’d taken a ton of photos, but the big dope forgot to put film in the camera. We’d planned to take more next time, had planned for me to move in with him when I turned 16 so I could go to college in London but sadly fate had other plans because he died when I was 12. Because he was a Muslim, his funeral took place within a few days of his death. I never had the opportunity for closure because his funeral had already taken place by the time I’d even learned of his death.

For years there was a part of me that held onto the thought that he might still be alive and just didn’t want to be my father. As if lying about his death was a twisted way of sparing me feelings of rejection. It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s when I began doing my own research and saw his death certificate for myself that I was able to start resolving those abandonment issues.

Even before Mostafa died, he’d always been a disembodied voice at the other end of the phone. In many ways I looked to my grandmothers’ lodgers as surrogate father figures. I was desperate for any kind of positive role model because I didn’t really have a relationship with my mother, to her I was more like a bratty little brother that she had to compete with for her own mother’s affection. My grandmother doted upon me, as I was the baby she never had because my own mother had been adopted under dubious circumstances by my grandmother when my mother was nearly five years old. My grandmother felt so sorry for the way I came into the world that she allowed me to get away much more than most parents ever would.

By the age of 15, I was experimenting with drugs and alcohol and had become too much for even my grandmother to handle so I went to live with my mother, but after a breakdown in an already fragile relationship, I became homeless at 16. 

Being homeless is as close to being invisible as anybody can get because people choose not to see you. When I became homeless, my grandmother pleaded with me to come back to Ireland, but I was too stubborn to give up because I knew in my heart that there was no future for me there. Through the sense of invisibility, I found by being homeless, I also found freedom from societal expectations and slowly discovered literature as my only means of escape. I spent most days queuing up in the Homeless Peoples Unit, Bournemouth Road, Peckham to get one-night stays in temporary accommodation in Earls Court. With no money for transport, I’d use an outdated bus pass to flash the drivers. Because I was a well-mannered white boy nobody hardly ever gave me, nor my outdated bus pass a second glance.

When I should have been studying for my GCSEs, I was placed in this temporary accommodation nightmare with alcoholics, drug addicts, asylum seekers and people just released from prison. I spent as much time as I could in libraries, where I felt safe. My library card was my most valued possession but even that was taken from me when I was beaten and robbed by a gang of youths outside Elephant & Castle for an empty wallet, an outdated bus pass and most importantly my library card.

After spending a year on the streets my grandmother sold our family home and gave me an inheritance of close to £100k at 17 which I spent in 10 months before turning 18. My grandmother came to the UK, and we went on holiday to visit a family friend in Wales. I ended up enrolling in college and 17 years later Wales has become my home. When I first arrived, I’d gone from abject poverty to excess almost overnight. I’d see my classmates unable to afford lunch, so I would buy lunch for the whole class just so I could feed those that couldn’t afford to feed themselves without directly offering anyone charity because I knew all too well what it felt like to feel hunger and shame. Naturally, people took advantage of my generosity and before I knew it all the money was gone and so were most of the friends, I thought I had.

The ones that chose to stick by me when I had nothing left became my real family. It wasn’t until sometime after my grandmother passed away in 2014 that I felt like I’d reached a point of genuine emotional stability, I still had many unanswered questions about my heritage. I was about 27 years old when my other half bought me a DNA testing kit for Christmas, but it never yielded any significant results. As a teenager my mother told me of someone else who might be my father. Him and I spoke shortly after the birth of my first child in 2009 but never got round to doing DNA testing because he was a bit erratic to say the least, having been a “political prisoner” during my childhood. But it turned out that he wasn’t my biological father either. My mother and I had been estranged for most of my life and have not spoken a word to each other since my grandmother’s funeral. Sometimes what’s said in grief cannot be unsaid and we just have to move on regardless of how painful that might be.

It wasn’t until December 2020, that I discovered you could download your raw DNA directly from your test providers website. For some providers it’s available instantly for others it takes a couple of days to process. Once I had my raw DNA file, I was able to cross check other databases for free via GEDmatch. GEDmatch also has a Facebook community that enables people to directly compare their own DNA. From there I was able to determine that my three closest matches (2^nd or 3^rd cousins) were all being managed by a single account in Canada.

It turned out that I was related to the account holders’ children via their late wife. This gave me enough information to trace my paternal line back to my hometown Shannon, Co Clare. At that point I hired a genealogist who confirmed my research before making direct contact with my biological family to arrange further DNA testing.

These days everyone is connected by no more than a few degrees of separation, especially where social media is concerned. Because I come from a small town, the few friends I stayed in contact with just so happened to be friends with one of my potential aunts. I reached out to this potential aunt and explained the situation as best I could. Fortunately, enough she was very understanding and promised to speak to her brothers. At that point it wasn’t clear which of her two brothers was my biological father. However, the DNA evidence had at least proved beyond a doubt that I was related to their mother.

At first, the brothers denied even knowing my mother but one of their wives did remember her from “Girl Guides” of all places. So, the brothers agreed to undergo further DNA testing at my expense. It was an agonizing six-weeks waiting for the results which revealed that one of the brothers was indeed my biological father. I’d been committed to finding the truth of my parentage for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t something new to me, it was the conclusion to a lifetime’s research. But for them it was a bombshell out of the blue which I felt incredibly guilty for dropping on them.

At first my father and I spoke at great length, trying to catch each other up on a lifetime of missed conversation. There was something incredibly touching about being drunk called in the early hours of the morning by an apologetic father. He felt awful after learning how difficult my childhood had been because he’d only been living a few streets away from where I grew up. If he’d had only known that I existed things would have been different etc.

I’d told him things worked out for the best and that given the chance I wouldn’t change anything because overcoming all the adversity I’ve faced has made me a better person. I told him how I’d recently completed a master’s degree, made a Stephen King film, and landed myself a comfortable graduate job. He was a bit blown away and so was I when I heard my father say that he was proud of me. But my father hadn’t just missed out on my life, he’d also been missing out on his grandchildren’s lives as well.

Because of Covid restrictions the only place we could meet was in Belfast. I brought my eldest daughter along and we shared a pleasant enough meal together with my father, his wife, my 18-year-old half-brother and his girlfriend. My father and I seemed to get along well, we were both cracking jokes and seemed to be enjoying each other’s company but small talk around the table felt understandably uncomfortable. By the next day it seemed as though we’d gotten the brush off because my father’s wife had apparently fallen in the night, hurting her ankle so our plans for spending the following day getting to know each other came to an abrupt end and there’s been naught but awkward silence and strained pleasantries ever since.

I’ve learned that actions speak louder than words and inaction speaks even louder still because people tend to make time for the things they want to do and excuses for the things they don’t. The whole experience of meeting my father left me feeling hollow. Contending with the mother or in this case the father of all rejections undermined my confidence and sense of self-worth.

After a year or so reflecting upon this brief meeting with my biological father, I realized that true emotional maturity often means being able to come to terms with the fact that not all stories have the picture-perfect ending we’d like. I’m now halfway to being 70 years old, I’ve buried my best friend along with the women who sacrificed everything to raise me. I’ve outgrown needing a father figure in my life but what stings is that my children are missing out on having a relationship with their grandfather. Yet it’s not something I have any control over and for better or worse it’s just something I’ve had to accept.

By nature, I’m my biological father’s son but by nurture I’m a patchwork of all the positive male role models I’ve had in my life, be they authors or filmmakers whose work inspired me. Or the man that chose to be my father, absent of any biological or social obligation. 

With this newfound perspective I think I’m finally ready to celebrate what I had instead of mourning what I lost. After twenty years since Mostafa’s death, I’m hoping to one day connect with his living relatives so that I can honour the man that chose me to be his son just as I choose him to be my father, or rather I realize that he was the only father I ever truly needed, and I was blessed to have had him in my life at all.