Memoir
My Father Who Art In Heaven
When Ange’s parents told her that her father had been given the all clear with regards to his brain tumour in the summer 2013, she had a funny feeling it would come back with a vengeance. She didn’t want to spoil her parents’ joy, so she kept her feelings to herself.
In September, she received a call to say that her dad had lost his ability to stand up and would now require a wheelchair. She knew that this was the beginning of his transition back to the creator but faced denial from everyone in her family.
Before long, he started to struggle with speaking too. How could she make the most of the last months of his life? She soon realised that it was not too late to make peace with her dad because death was not the end.
What readers have said...
The descriptions of Paris – the park where you walked him, and the morning run are both wonderful. your writing is so alive with smells, and delicious details of the differences in style between your mum and dad. It was fun to visit their apartment, at the same time, deeply touching to feel your emotions and welling grief. When you arrive home, to your family, the kids embrace is such a relief after the enormity of your visit. Brilliant writing.
It’s never too late to make peace with your dad. Death is not the end.
Ange wasn’t able to attend her father’s funeral. To celebrate her father’s life, she dedicated the day of his funeral to finishing an oil painting that she had meant to gift him to enrich his bedridden life.
A death can upset the applecart in a family and you might want to protect yourself by not attending a funeral if members of your family are not safe, but sometimes it can happen because you are not officially part of the family. That can be so incredibly cruel. Sadly this happens a lot in LGBTQIA communities.
Ange wants people to understand that there are many different reasons why we might not be able to attend their loved one’s funeral. It can be incredibly upsetting for two reasons. First of all, we might think our loved ones in heaven are upset at us not coming. It’s important to understand that this is not the case. Secondly, it often is the case because we believe there is only one way to honour someone’s death.
Ange was inspired to write her memoir by a memoir she read at the time of her father’s death. The Afterlife of Billy Fingers is a memoir about Annie Kagan’s bad boy brother. When she receives a call from the police, Annie’s first thought is: “Oh no! Billy must have been arrested again.”
Three weeks later, Annie hears her brother’s voice who asks her to get the red notebook he sent her the year before for her birthday. He had written her a message ” Dear Annie, Everyone needs a boook dedicated to them. Read between the lines. Love, Billy.”
At that point, Ange still hadn’t realised that her father wanted her to write a memoir about him with him, the way Annie had with her brother. And yet, two years later, as she finished the last edits on the manuscript with her fountain pen in purple ink, she realised my father had been holding the pen with her.
Her realisation dawned on her because of the fountain pen with purple ink. In the five years she had been writing books, she had never done edits by hand with a fountain pen. Ange types faster than she writes and writing with a fountain pen frutrates her. There had to be a reason. Her father, on the other hand was the opposite. He loved fountain pens and never used a computer. He refused to learn to use them until his death.
Everything started making sense. Part of Ange’s memoir is written in her father’s voice as he explains his adventures into the spirit world, his mentor Annabelle and how he was allowed to go back on Earth very briefly to visit Ange in a moment she captured with her phone camera in the streets of Paris. Her first orb photo.
Everybody goes through grief in a different way. And in truth, there is no right or wrong way. There is just your way. But what if there was a way to approach death that helps us understand that death is not the end? Ange shows the way in this incredible memoir where angels guide her steps and help her turn the last three months of her father’s life into the most beautiful time in their relationship. And then, continues the conversation with her dad after he dies.