Writing about my father by Annmarie Miles
My dad was a story-teller. I heard the same stories numerous times through my childhood, but he had the ability to make us laugh every time. He was a master at bringing home the punchline no matter how well you knew it. Daddy loved an audience and always had a speech ready. He lived with an acquired brain injury for over thirty years until his death at 83 y.o. So, as the years went on, he got some details confused, and as they say in Ireland, some of his stories grew with the telling . But it was always entertaining, and people just loved him. My story-telling was more in songs when I was growing up. You may have read before how I didn’t start writing stories regularly until I turned forty, then they poured out of me, as if they’d been sitting in storage, waiting to be released. One of my most treasured possessions is a copy of my first collection of short stories which I had given to my dad. After he died, I found it in his belongings. He had ticked the end of each story, ...