All About My Dad

As we approach Father’s Day, Fiona Fraser remembers the adventurous, smiling giant of a man who was her adored dad – a man who died before his time, but left a lasting legacy of love.

- Fiona Fraser

My mum likes to tell a story. It’s about the time I applied for a job at the local New World supermarket. I was 14 and was looking forward to wearing the fire engine red, zip-front polyester uniform and name badge, using the clocking-in machine and earning $3.75 per hour, should I be successful.

The owner, a man of community note, asked me a few questions. “Ah, Fiona,” he said, peering first at the application form, and then at me. “So I see here you’d like a part-time job. What does your father do?”

My response was rapid, blunt, but entirely truthful. “He’s dead.”

I got the job, possibly out of pity.

What I could have answered, had I not been so affronted to be assessed for my suitability on the accomplishments of my father, was this: that although he’d recently passed away, he had been a farmer, a freezing worker, a fisherman, a businessman, a double bassist, a political aspirant, a traveller, a truck driver, a skipper, a protestor, an entrepreneur, an orator, a horseman, a poet, a cook, and most importantly of all, a father. A very good one.

My divine dad, John, died aged just 43.

Forty-three! I was only just that age myself until July. And for the entirety of my 44th year on earth that information was like a scab. It would get itchy, I’d scratch it, I’d bleed a little, heal, move on. I’d get a headache and think, “Well, Dad died at 43. It’s probably a brain tumour.” I’d chat to the millennials at work and realise they probably thought of me as really old and I’d smile to myself thinking, “But I’m not! I’m like you!” and then the reality of my father dying at the very age I now was would wash through my body. And I’d realise that yes, it’s possible to be someone living their best life, their still-young life, and then die.