The Ghost of My Father

Posted: December 8, 2025 | Author: dana lange | Filed under: Uncategorized |Leave a comment

Yesterday we woke up too early in Scotland after the previous magical birthday of Boris. It was our farewell breakfast before we set off on the coach back to the Aberdeen airport. Our time with our Friends of Boris was much too short. There were still people who’s stories I had yet to hear and friends to still bond with.

I sat on the bus with Rhonda, who I have known at least 10 years. We had a chance to catch up and I learned of the passing of sweet Nestor, an amazing man who was a trainer at Empower, the studio I used to train at that Rhonda used to own with Jess.

Nestor had a glioblastoma ten years ago. Dr. Friedman, the world’s Leader in the field trained at Empower too and cured Nestor. It was miraculous, until it wasn’t. But Nestor had ten more years to raise his son Kai and touch the lives of many people.

I cried as Rhonda told me about his last days, having passed just a week ago. Nestor was always very encouraging when I would see him at the gym. I know the world was better for his being in it. I was so glad Rhonda and her husband Kelly came on the trip and got to have a break after such a sad loss.

When we got back to London we said goodbye to the crew who flew back with us, which included Michelle and Boris. Their gift to us all will stay with us all of our days. I had just been reminded how none of us know how long that will be.

We begged off the dinner invitation because we were staying right in Paddington, which had been our old neighborhood when we lived in London in the nineties. We wanted to go visit our local Pub, the Victoria and go look at our old house around the corner on Hyde Park Garden Mews.

So we dropped out bags at the tiny hotel we were spending the night at and walked down the street to the Pub that looked exactly the same way it did when we left in 1998.

My Dad was a great lover of Pubs. How could he not be, beer was his primary liquid. Russ and I not only worked with my Dad in London, but we all lived together in the same mews house. It was a lovely three bedroom house with a garage for our silver VW station wagon we drove to Grant Thornton House next to Euston station where we had a floor in the building for our offices.

Our bedroom and bathroom in the mews house were on the ground floor, next to the laundry room and the garage. The second floor was the living room, dining room and kitchen and the third floor had two more bedrooms and bathrooms. The Victoria was about six houses away and around the corner, which made the perfect place for my father to hang out when he was not at work or asleep.

Walking in the pub last night I half expected to see him at a corner table with two beers. He always ordered two at a time, to save steps, he said. The one difference in the Victoria is that it no longer smelled of the smoke which my father contributed greatly too.

Being Sunday meant you could get a Sunday Roast. They still had the same choices, beef, chicken, Lamb, but now they also had a veg only option. I got what my father and I always got, which was the lamb. It came with roasted carrots, potatoes, cabbage, cheese cauliflower, Yorkshire pudding, gravy with the lamb, and the best part, the mint sauce.

When the waitress brought our plates I told her it was exactly the same as 28 years ago when we lived around the corner. She could not have been born then, but she said, “You ordered the best thing we have. I love the Sunday Lamb roast.”

It tasted exactly the same as it did 28 years ago. It was as if my father was there. In his favorite place, eating his favorite thing. I just skipped the beer.

I was lucky that as an adult I got to spend so much time with my Dad. It wasn’t always fun, but I always learned a lot. Even though he has been gone these last few years I still have moments when I feel like he is right by me.

After dinner Russ and I walked down to our house. Eerily, sitting out front was a silver VW station Wagon, the newer model of our exact car. The gararge was gone, now converted into living space making our bedroom twice as big as the tiny version we slept in.

Otherwise the antique Mews house looked the same the cobble stones that made the mews were undisturbed and I’m certain the horses that were stabled down the street still clomped down the mews on the way to exercising in Hyde Park as they did everyday when we lived there. How did I know that? There was still the faintest whiff of Horse poop that the stables girls would miss when they came through everyday sweeping up after the last horses were back in the stable.

The sights, the tastes, the smells, it was as if the ghost of my father was right there with me. Not with me, but never gone.

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