Personal – Tribute to my father 2005

 

No blog of mine would be complete without a tribute to my father – dad.  Also taken too soon at 68 to the Big C.

Seems to be a family thing.

In 2005, when my life was going all pear-shaped, not wanting to go back the corporate world, yearning to be a photographer, I sat my dad down and said, “I’ve got to figure this studio stuff all out”.  He was happy to oblige.

I have to give my son’s father credit for showing me the ropes in earlier years, for which I am eternally grateful.

As I reflect back on this very first portrait sitting, I’m overwhelmed by who I see and how it feels to have him looking back at me.

It is exactly as I knew him.

A deep thinker, educationalist, a man before his time, who would be deeply disheartened to see what has become of his South Africa, having fought so hard to start the first non-racial school in the country and to be the founding chairman of the IEB – Independent Education Board – amongst other challenges he rose up to.

As my boy grows up I see more and more of my father in him at certain angles.

And then there are those little things like my boy doing his school tie in the entrance mirror every morning to perfection, just like I remember my father doing is.  Still too young for deodorant he does dabble in it occasionally which  too reminds me of my dad and the scent of his aftershave that would linger in the passage after he left for work.

The sadness that is inscribed all over his face is from the incredibly challenging life he lived overshadowed by the loss of my mother, who died too soon,  8 years earlier.

He died with his children, except my sister who got on the first flight from Perth, around him watching him take his last breathe.  It was quite something to watch the machines slowly come to a flat liner.

I have said this before in my About that I will never forget that powerful, privileged moment even with all its sadness.

He died on my mother’s birthday.  Perfect.

But it didn’t take long for my brother to say, “now we were all orphans!”  Typical

Many have commented over the years, when seeing his portrait in my studio, that they know this person from somewhere.  “What is his name?”

 

 

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