For pretty much most of the next two weeks I am going back to my hometown and one of the highlights of my visit will occur on 11 September when a number of old school friends and I will get together. We had a similar mini-reunion two years ago during my last visit, only this time there will be one of my best friends from primary school who I have not seen since 1988. I am so looking forward to this. It has also been some time since I have seen some of my other friends who may come along; my two best friends from secondary school, one of who it has been about ten years and the other during the summer before Covid and the final one who I probably last saw rather spontaneously by chance around about 2004(ish). 

However, the main highlight is going to be when I see my old man - as I affectionately call him. He is my dad in everything, but DNA and a compelling argument for nurture in the nature vs. nurture debate as I am very similar to him in many of my behaviours and worldview. My brother, slightly older, conversely is the opposite in that his personality is more like our biological dad's and thus his demeanour very much favours the nature argument in the same debate. I have not seen my old man for 12 years, due to different lives, different circles, different responsibilities and Covid. He too lives away, in France, and so this is the first time we have been able to coordinate things so we can meet together with his second wife who he met some 8 years after my mum died far too young. She and I get on really well too and that is great and I am looking forward to seeing her too.

With these long overdue meetings to look forward to, it has set my mind thinking about how valuable our relationships are to us and whether, when there is estrangement, we can proactively do something about it or whether indeed we should let sleeping dogs lie - which means to effectively bury our heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. 

Let me explain starting with my brother. My brother and I have always had a slightly challenging relationship and I think it is more complex than simple sibling rivalry, but with no blame (as is the tone of almost my entire article) either way it might just come down to different personalities. He sees the world how he does and I see it how I do. However, I was not always the best little brother in the world. He found it more difficult to make friendships than I ever did, especially later in school life and into our teens and frankly on the rare occasions when he did bring a friend round I was truly horrible to them. At that time with one of them I felt I had some justification. I must have been about eight and the friend broke one of my favourite toys so I hit him and he ran away. He never came round again. Later in secondary school when another friend of my brother came round I was just really horrible to him - and I cannot even provide a childish justification for that - I was just mean. After a few times he stopped coming round.

In both cases I was clearly wrong and who knows how it affected my brother who may have felt like he couldn't invite friends round. That was on me!

So, many years later, to try to smooth our relationship out I made a specific point of taking responsibility for my past actions. We met in a pub and I laid it out for him and asked him how he felt about it and then I apologised completely unconditionally.

His response took me aback - he simply said "If it makes you feel better."

The whole conversation was supposed to be about him and not about me. I wanted to take responsibility but somehow it fell on deaf ears and turned it back round on me as though it was all about my conscience and peace of mind. It was meant to be a reconcilitary step.

Secondly, concerning my biological dad things were even more complex. Very simply he was rarely present (see what I mean by being a dad is more than biology). When he was it was like a favourite uncle visiting and lavishing presents on us. He used to work in the local crisp (potato chips) factory and he always had a box of crisps with him. He remarried the day before my 12th birthday to a lovely lady who I fully accepted from the beginning, but who my brother had some difficulty with even if their relationship was amicable.

She invested a lot in our relationships, but for my brother while he recognised her efforts his heartfelt view was that she was simply the wrong person to be putting the effort in.

As my brother and I got older things fell into a more predictable pattern of only seeing them once a year. Generally speaking it was a week before Christmas, which happened to coincide roughly with my birthday. We would meet our biological dad and go into the city centre where he would buy us a present each - whatever we wanted with a price ceiling and then we would hire two videos (one each) and go back to his house where his wife would often be. We would have something to eat and then watch the films before returning home. 

It was always nice, but that was pretty much it and to boot, I always got a birthday card because of when we met and my brother, whose birthday falls about a week into the new year, very rarely did and if he did it was just shoved through the letterbox. Could this be a reason for his resentment?

From the age of 16 when I entered sixth form I had free Monday afternoons and while I should have stayed in school I usually went to see them and spent a couple of hours with them. This was entirely my decision and I often found myself thankful that my stepmum was there because at least then there would be a conversation.

Probably the next important thing that happened in our relationship was when our mum died in December 1991 at the age of 44. I had just turned 20. He called us to see how we were, but that was about it. By his standards that was a lot! A few months later he arranged to meet with us and he pretty much said to us "You are my sons and you need to start behaving as such or we are done! I was going to tell you this at Christmas and then your mum died!"

How dare he! 

I have long held the view that when a relationship between parent and child is in trouble it is for the parent to step up and deal with it, even if the child is now an adult as the child is carrying stuff over from their childhood. Of course there are exceptions. If you 18 year old is living at home and being totally disrespectful, stealing or behaving in any other unacceptable manner then the line has to be drawn in the sand because that 18 year old needs to take responsibility.

Even so, I brushed this aside and so we carried on and I was meeting with my stepmum on a very regular basis, even a couple of times a week and while my brother also saw her, he never became as close as I did to her for reasons I have already mentioned.

Then in about 2002 he got lung cancer and he fought it for five years before dying in October 2007. During that last summer, when I was in the UK I was desperate to see him but was always deflected. "He is too ill. He doesn't want to". Maybe it was selfish on my part, but what about my need to see him in the light of how serious things were. 

I was there when he passed. By coincidence I had flown in for a friend's wedding and he died the same day that I flew in. It was almost like he had waited for me. It was a Friday and he was beyond having any kind of conversation with even if literally the day before he had been up and about and coherent. 

I felt like a last conversation had been stolen from me and was angry about not seeing him during that last summer.

And now he was gone. I always wanted more for him and while he was still alive there was hope, that somehow some kind of breakthrough would happen that all those years of distance would somehow evaporate. I knew he loved me - I will never forgot how he used to look at us - but somehow it got stuck in expression. Now he was dead there was nothing. I became more angry as disappointment overwhelmed me and to be honest I have never really fully dealt with it. I bury my head in the sand and don't acknowledge him because on those rare occasions when I do, the anger once more returns to the fore.

While he was alive there was hope and now there was nothing. Funnily enough my brother moved on very easily and I put this down to differing expectations. He always knew who and what my dad was and I always hoped for more. Now he was dead... the end.

I know my post today is somewhat sprawling, but to bring things to an end I want to summarise. Reaching out to my brother failed because my motives were misunderstood.  Not reaching out to my dad failed because he wasn't able to reach me and to bring it into the here and now I will start by saying these challenges never go away.

So with all of this going on in my head, I am looking at my relationships very carefully. The final lesson that came from my dad - his legacy if you like - is that ultimately we can take brokenness to the grave or try to fix things where necessary. Going back to England for several days will give me time and space as well as an opportunity to try to make things right and especially in cases where relationships were historically good but have deteriorated and at least in part because I have made mistakes along the way which have made things worse. In some cases if the estrangement is too great, a letter might help, but then I found myself asking to what end?

It might just make things worse.

My intention in all such cases would be reconciliation so we can move forwards, but as I have said about my brother and my dad I need to be realistic. It might be interpreted as self-justification, or an attempt to persuade others to my point of view or just like my brother saw it, it might be perceived as an attempt for me to dump everything and thus claim I had taken responsibility and yes while there are two sides to every story it is not right for me to just simply dump my responsibility with an attitude of "so I have done my bit."

So maybe the life lesson is that it is better just to let sleeping dogs lie.

As always stay safe and well my friends.