Cheeku,
Life has become like riding a roller coaster which is continuously accelerating. I have reached the one position I had always aspired for since I was a rookie Deputy Secretary. If one had asked me what I really wished to be at the end of my career I would have said, this is where I would have liked to be. All the good I may have done in my life seemed to have outweighed all the bad that I would have done, for this once, and I reached where I wished to be. As far as my career as a civil servant goes, I have reached the ultimate ambition and I can with honesty say I wish for nothing more.
You were there when I told you on the phone in Cardiff that I was going to be appointed as the Joint Secretary in DEA. Younwere so excited. You called up your friends and told them the good news, told them this was to be kept under wraps until the orders were out…I know you were looking forward to seeing me back in the North Block, where I wanted to be…this was just before that fateful day, 1 May 2005, the day of greatest misfortune for all of us, for me…the day you left us for your longest of long journeys.
I know how you would have felt now. How excited you would have been, how much a part of your dad’s achievments, his happiness, his contentment. How younwould have toasted for his success in your inimitable way. Life would have brightened up that much more…like a million more candles lit with your booming laughter.
This morning as I began to climb the steep steps of the Sun Pyramid of the Aztec near Mexico City, I had a feeling you would be sitting there on top of the rock next to the eagle perched there. You would be watching with a sardonic smile your dad, much older in age, huffing and puffing up the steep steps. Half way up, I realized that it would take much longer than I had thought to reach the top and gave up the climb. I knew you would laugh, push your glasses down your nose and with twinkling eyes say ‘Aha! Dad! Excuse, excuse…you are clearly out of shape!’ As I started climbing down I waved towards the top, as if to say to you ‘So long, adios, beta!’
There would be many many more such journeys and I know you woud be there. You always are around me. As I grow older, I find myself increasingly drawing strength from you and from Tubby. That is how it ought to be. You would always be there to steady me when I falter, to put your arm around me if I stumble…
Tubby and you always were and will always be the well-spring of my being…that is how it ought to be, is.
Love
Dad
22 September 2012 in Mexico