My Father, the Restless Emigrant
My dad with me in 1963 In 2005, at the age of 67, my father and his second wife sold everything, left the country with just what they could carry, and settled in Aubusson, a town of 3000 people in the most sparsely-populated area of central France. It was the first time in his life that he had ever been abroad. What drove someone from a peaceful western country, with no threat of war or persecution, to take such a drastic step? He died a few days ago, at the age of 85. This is my attempt to make some sense of a life which often seemed to alternate between hope and disappointment, to teeter towards disaster, but never actually succumb. This won’t be a conventional obituary. I can’t write in the gushing media style, of a wonderful man who did so much for others. I owe him a lot – mainly through learning from his mistakes. He was a man of many flaws, but he was also a man of his time, and that’s what makes this story worth telling. To understand what motivated him, and indirect