The last of my father's few remaining possessions arrived today. A few old handtools, some rusted beyond use, some only showing their age a little; a few geegaws, the last things that he held much for; and a few books, an eclectic mix of fiction and non.
He was not an educated man, but he was smart, and taught me a great many things; he had learnt the lesson to learn - learn from someone else's mistakes, and made sure that I learnt it well. He taught himself much, learnt what he can, and gave back more than he was ever given. He also had a great knack for not accumulating more than he needed. Visiting him was akin to moving to a monastery - a lack of the unnecessary, a spartan lifestyle born in poverty, but matured in enlightenment.
He could give me little except a dry roof over a stable house, a few books, warm home-cooked meals, a love of learning, independence, health, and his loving care. He also gave to me a generous sense of humour, and a cynical view of people.
And now, the few possessions he had.
A melancholy washes over me as I look through them; I remember him in health, and in sickness. He and a both felt a revulsion for what was eating him to oblivion, destroying him from the inside out.
His attitude had always been that a person should be self-sufficient; his dream was to buy acreage, build a hobby farm where he could grow plenty of food, let society go to waste whilst lying back in a hammock, eating on a fresh mango. Many people would laugh at it, or criticise him for his lack of ambition. I simply criticised his choice of mango - a fruit I could never stand.
Even in the few times I last saw him, I saw in his eyes a sorrow that he never managed to achieve that dream, but a happiness that I had, even if I had sworn to never allow a mango tree to grow on my land.
His illness is one of the things that worries me - without modern medicines, without vaccines, without... so many things, any of the ailments that most of us laugh at become mortal dangers. What of a rusted nail without a tetanus vaccine, what of short-sightedness without spectacles, what of whooping cough, measles? I need to make good friends with a good many people, a doctor more than most; a doctor who accepts the chances of global cataclysm is rare enough - one who is willing to take steps to survive one another matter entirely.
I have started reading again "The Earth Abides" by George Stewart; although I already know the story, it provides a salutory lesson - a plague wipes out most people, the few people struggle in the aftermath. A loner tries to rebuild society, but cannot motivate the small community he builds up to learn the few things he can teach. It is depressing, as he survives randomly - a plague randomly selects its victims, and those that survives face the psychological horror of watching all around them die over days or weeks, and not being able to do anything to heal them. You cannot prepare, you can only survive. Or not, as the case may be.
My father taught me, amongst over things, that there are times when you must be prepared to walk away, no matter how painful, to all the things you hold dear.