My daddy

I write this after what has been a long 18 months.

My mother and I do not plan on having any formal service to commemorate my father?s death ? a decision we came to a while back, largely due to the global public health crisis we are facing, and not feeling that any alternative function was necessary for our own personal closure. Yet, still, I am blown away by how many people have acknowledged my father and expressed their appreciation for his life and his work. My Mum and I thank absolutely everyone who has wished us well, especially those we have not yet been able to respond to. I never expected any of this.

So many people over the last few days have memorialised my father and spoken about their relationships with him, and done so incredibly beautifully. He worked so hard and was proud of the accolades he received. However, here I am, in the wake of his death, wondering if it was an undercover celebrity who raised me. Because, of course, these do not accurately reflect the man I knew ? my Dad.

He was always quick to bring me along for the journey. He never thought any environment or conversation was too ?mature? for me. Dad told me I had to work every summer from the age of 13 ?even if the only place that would pretend to hire anyone that age was The Gleaner, as a favour to their chairman on the 5th floor. My exit report from that first internship described me as ?excellent at the front desk, because she knows how to speak to all people for public relations?. My confidence to speak, especially to adults as a young child, was just one of the many lessons he taught me. As a mere five-year-old, my dad would pack me into his car and take me to various business cocktail parties, where I was, without a doubt, the only person below 30. I laugh thinking about how I am such a product of my dad?s parenting and of his role in my life.

As I got older and my Mum felt her dues had been paid, she felt less obligated to partake in ?Oliver?s politics?, so I became his willing companion. Even at what seemed to me to be the most gruesomely boring of events, he never failed to find someone with whom to joke throughout the evening. He never missed an opportunity to better get to know someone he found interesting and to laugh with them. His wisdom was second only to his wit.

HIS ?OUTREACH?

I knew my Dad as a man who walked through his life with brutally dry humour. It came without any advance explanation, and so it often left people entirely confused as to how to respond to him until their understanding for him eventually clicked. He taught me how to build relationships on humour and how to converse deeply and sincerely with absolutely anyone, from his closest companions to the most unsuspecting and lonely strangers. My Mum and I referred to it as his ?outreach?, and his outreach was daily and took no notice of convenience. He never heeded our exhausted pleas of ?not here, not now!? No matter where he was ? whether in a Gleaner Director?s Luncheon, in a Dunkin? Donuts near my isolated boarding school in Connecticut, or in a foreign country where he didn?t even speak the local language ? my Dad knew how to ask any and everyone tough questions, he listened only when he received genuine and honest answers, and he expected nothing less than the best from everyone around him.

I am deeply impacted by all of the people who have thanked my Mum and me for ?sharing? my father with them. But rather, I wish to thank all of you for sharing my Dad with me. His family at The Gleaner, and at JN, was also my own. Our (and his) staff who have been in and out of our home are my relatives. He was an incredibly business-minded man, and his way of showing his affection to others was often through figuring out how to help, or how to teach. He found raw emotions challenging. If I called him crying from abroad, he would rush to find my Mum. Yet still, he was amusingly intentional about hugging and holding me as much as possible, in response to my teasing him that he wasn?t a ?hugging parent? during my childhood.

I say all of this with no doubt of his incredible love and devotion to me. I have never been able to traverse Jamaica without being recognised as ?Oliver?s daughter?. As much as I may still cringe at the thought of being told over and over again how much I resembled this bald, chubby man, I am reminded every single day that I truly am half ? if not more ? him.

My Mum would often say that it was because my Dad and I were so similar that we frequently butted heads. A couple summers ago, he fired me from a job in his office because he said I was ?humbugging up the place too much?. My Dad?s formal approach to his work rarely meshed with my millennial views that made me quick to fight back when he told me to question what impact my nose ring might have on my professionalism and ultimate career.

SHAPING ME

I have always been fast to criticise him and tell him that he needed to do more for his staff, for his community, and to be wary of becoming a ?rich, white, uptown capitalist?. He was always ready to remind me (and everyone else) that he is a country boy from Savanna-la-Mar. But with regards to the rest of my criticism, here I now am having to eat my own words. I only just learnt, from Twitter, that my Dad would spend his weekends, in the early 1960s in London, in train stations helping recently migrated Jamaicans navigate their new territory. My Dad never had any desire to boast or bias anyone, myself included. He never spoke ill of anyone. I have never known whom my Dad voted for. And I found out about nearly all of his philanthropic endeavours by hearsay or ?buck-ups? ? rarely, if ever, from him willingly offering up this information himself. He always allowed me the space to push him to be better, and never felt it necessary to defend himself to anyone, even me. He was confident in himself, and confident in who he was shaping me to be.

In his will, he expressed the wish that I live in Jamaica. My Mum, ever the lawyer, pointed out that this request could not legally be upheld, but he insisted it remain. When he shared it with me, I reminded him that he raised a daughter whose heart has always brought her home. It comes as no surprise that as a result of being his child, I have a budding desire to live my life in service to my country. Even if I will do so more tattooed, with more piercings and wearing far more casual office wear than he might have ideally hoped for.

THANKS FOR SUPPORT

I remember going to Boston earlier this year, and feeling essentially paralysed with worry and anxiety throughout what was only a weekend-long trip, as it was the furthest I had been from my Dad since he became ill. Care-taking for and loving a dying person are incredibly difficult ? and I would be entirely remiss if I did not speak to the incredible community I had, but mostly that my Dad had. Whether in loving partnership with my Mum, in familial support and affection, in friendship, in all the various business and public service communities he was a part of, in receiving the best medical care and the best at-home care, Dad never went without. It is all of those people who allowed my Dad to be the best version of himself, both at his healthiest and his most ill.

To all of who knew him, thank your for sharing my Dad with me. Thank you for all that you were for my Dad, so that I could get him as the regular daddy I will always remember him to be.

If anyone would like to make contributions of any size in my Dad?s honour, to either Mustard Seed Communities or the Savannah-la-Mar Hospital, we would be deeply honoured and would consider it a farewell gift to him.

Alexandra Clarke