balding man leaning to the right while sitting in a chair. Fingers clasped on the arm of the chair. Man is in a suit and tie.

Happy birthday, Boss

Happy birthday, Boss.

I miss not being able to pick up the phone and talk to you today.

It seems strange.

You’d have been 99.

I remember when you crossed the line and started being proud about your age, when ‘in my 90s’ morphed into ‘tipping 100’.

I really thought you’d make it.

I thought you’d see out the century.

You went too quickly and too soon.

I had a mass said for you at home today. I watched it online.

The priest left out the birthday remembrance part and it seemed as if you’d died all over again.

You’d have enjoyed the confusion.

There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about you.

I hear you giving out to me when I do something stupid and then laughing when I point out that only the other day you’d done that same thing, too.

Chip off the old block, and all that.

I still turn to you for advice and on good days, I can hear what you have to say.

On bad days, I get lost in the fact that you’re not here.

I talk about you. A lot. I tell people stories about my dad, stories they must have heard a million times by now.

It helps me keep you alive.

I like it when people tell stories about you, too.

About times when you did something unremarkable that left its mark.

About things you used to say.

I stopped myself the other day when I felt the words ‘God save all here’ come to my lips as I entered a room full of people with different gods, different beliefs.

You’d have said it anyway.

And it would have fit you.

And fit you well.

Someday, I will have the same courage of my convictions.

Oh, I nearly forgot.

We’re having lasagne for dinner tonight.

Remember that day, years ago, when mam was away, and I made you lasagne for dinner.

You looked askance at it even as I explained that the carbs came from the pasta and that your meat and veg (carrots and peas) were all there.

Meat and two veg, but in a different form.

And with sauce.

You were always suspicious of what sauces might be hiding.

I should have known better.

When I came in from the kitchen, you had scraped the meat from the pasta and set the sheets aside on your side plate.

You then asked me for potatoes.

I railed, teeth on edge at your recalcitrance.

Carbs are carbs.

Dinner was late that day. Not the usual 1 pm.

But you got what you wanted.

Later that evening, just before tea, at 6 pm, you called me outside, to the back door.

You pointed at the cats’ dish, loaded with your pasta rejects since 2 pm, a gleam of triumph in your eyes.

You see, you said – in a tone that screamed ‘I told you so’ – even the cats wouldn’t eat that stuff.

Point made.

Meat, potatoes, and two veg.

And no sauces.

Happy birthday, Boss.

 

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