I’ve lived my life expecting that call. I never thought I’d feel this guilty when it finally came
By: Stevie Beer
Tags: Addiction, Loss, Grief, Mental Health, Lived Through This

“If you knew how much pain I’m in, you’d be here. I’d travel anywhere for you if you felt like this. I’m in agony,” Dad slurred down the phone.

He’d broken his ribs after another drunken fall.

Since discharging himself from hospital against medical advice, he’d been calling non-stop crying out for boxes of paracetamol.

Calls like this weren’t uncommon. Throughout my 27 years they’ve been endless. I couldn’t jump every time he called.

Four days later he was found dead in his one-bedroom flat by paramedics. Not peacefully in his bed like I’d always hoped. But curled up on the floor by his phone.

He’d often tell me I was the love of his life. The only reason he clung on. He had my name tattooed on his arm. And now the guilt of knowing he left this world in such a lonely, cold way is crippling.

I hate that I couldn’t save him.

I was his only family. Dad and his siblings started using heroin in their 20s. His brother died a decade later after complications from AIDS and he lost contact with his sister when he left London.

I asked him once why he and his two siblings turned to heroin. He said it was an attempt to escape. Escape a violent dad. Escape growing up on an estate in east London “with f*** all”.

Dad had been in and out of prison for shoplifting when a conviction saw him sent to Bexhill, East Sussex. It was while serving this sentence that he met a teacher, who invited him to live with her fifteen minutes away in St Leonards-on-Sea.

It wasn’t a romantic relationship. He lived upstairs and she down. She cared for him and showed him compassion. She helped him start his own hairdressing business. She took in my mum during their fleeting relationship. She tried to show him how beautiful (something close to) normal could be. And she did so until the day she died.

I owe so much to her. She kept my dad alive. She enabled us to do so many wonderfully ordinary things together. Like our trips to the garden centre. Our kite flying days. Our summer holiday to Crete. Our early Sunday morning drives to the boot fair.

She must have seen the good in him. She must have seen the same light that I did.

I have always felt the weight of Dad’s loneliness. Of his vulnerability. From an early age, I’ve felt the need to protect him. To hold him up. I remember him shouting: “You’re not my f****** mother,” when I was 11 or 12. But honestly sometimes, I felt like I was. A week before he died, I carried him to bed just like a child. I kissed his forehead and stroked his hand as he looked up at me and mumbled: “You’re too good to me, darling”.

As a kid of an addicted parent, you live with ceaseless hope. Hope that your love will help them find strength. That your love will be enough to drag them out of their darkness. And when it isn’t, you’re consumed by the thought that maybe you’re just not doing enough.

The day I got that call all hope evaporated. And now I’m battling the death of this hope as well as the loss of him. The loss of my papa.

It shouldn’t have come as a shock. But it did. When I was 13 or 14 he just stopped taking hard drugs. I never asked why. I just told him I was proud.

He travelled. He got a gym membership, and shortly after, a very impressive six-pack.

But depression was never too far behind. He’d have bouts of extreme highs and then periods of prolonged, debilitating sadness. It was normal for Dad to knock himself out with booze for weeks on end. For him to sedate himself with a toxic cocktail of prescription drugs.

I used to break into his flat by sticking my arm through the letterbox and whacking the latch. I’d anxiously push the door open, hear his shallow snores and leave with the relief he was still breathing.

I was just so used to him coming out the other side. Even just briefly. I thought his body could take anything. We both did. We’d joke about his resilience. His cast-iron gut.

The UK’s Covid-19 lockdown meant we couldn’t see each other. Like so many vulnerable people, he felt so alone. He hated how lonely his life had become. I could hear how much it hurt when he called. I could see it in his messages. By the time I could finally see him, he was so lost. He was drinking more and more and kept repeating: “I just want to go to sleep”.

When that call came, I felt so desperately beaten. Like I’d failed him.

I had no one to tell of his passing. Just my own friends and family, and all they could say is: “I’m sorry for your loss”. Of course, their words were said with wholehearted empathy. But it’s not what I wanted to hear. I just wanted someone to cry with. Someone to reminisce and curse with.

It’s such an isolating, uncomfortable feeling grieving the loss of someone alone. Especially someone as colourful as him.

Dad could be seriously hard work, but he was so much more than his struggles. He had so much soul. So much charm. And although being his “daught” was sometimes difficult, his true self kept me close.

He felt so deeply. Loved so deeply. He’d tell me how gutting it was that he couldn’t beat his addictions before I started noticing the needles. He’d speak about his short-lived relationship with my mum over and over again, with such pain, decades after they split.

His name was Stephen Beer. I want people to see his name. To feel the loss of him. I want people to know the world is that much duller for his absence.

I’ll forever miss his flamboyance. His scandalous tiger-print Speedos. His almost evil sense of humour. His sheer obliviousness. His East End accent and the way he’d say “alright, punk” as we fist-bumped hello. His awful, like seriously awful electric guitar playing. The sound of Otis Redding blaring from his convertible car as he waited impatiently outside Mum’s to pick me up. The stench of jellied eels wafting from his fridge. His brutal honesty of people and our world. I’ll miss his love. It was such an unwieldy love.

Dad, I just hope you’re somewhere happy. You deserve to be happy. And I hope that now you’re rid of the heaviness of life.

You used to say: “If the good die young, I must be a f****** arsehole”. Well, Dad, you can’t have been half bad after all.