It was a warm summer’s evening and he was enjoying his daily walk with my mother across the Wellsford farmlands, when he suddenly felt unwell and collapsed.
My poor mother, my poor poor mother, tried in vain to resuscitate him for 25 minutes before running off to find help.
Every time I think of my father lying alone on that quiet hillside I feel as if my heart is being pressed in a vice, the jaws moving inexorably closer together.
My first memory: I am standing on a chair beside Dad. We were looking out the kitchen window and sharing a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream, the pink, white and brown all mixing together as I stirred the spoon.
"I could eat this until the cows come home," said my father.
And there they were — a cluster of soulful-eyed Friesians placidly chewing the cud in the paddock outside, watching us watching them.
I was equal parts entertained and bemused. Couldn’t Dad see that the cows were home?
I have myriad other memories of Dad.
We had a somewhat complex relationship; we clashed on almost every front and wound each other up no end. We had the same hot temper and rebellious spirit.
Many an evening meal descended into yelling, with me stomping off to my bedroom and slamming the door.
We argued about grapefruit, Donald Trump, alcohol, evolution, women’s rights and Winston Peters.
But underneath it all there was so much love. He would apologise to me by placing a bowl of tinned peaches outside my bedroom door.
No matter how angry and resentful I felt, I always ate those peaches.
My father taught me how to read and write, and fostered in me a love for literature and poetry.
He told us all manner of strange and horrifying stories — about monkey paws, Dracula, fiends who bricked up former friends in their wine cellars — and laughed uproariously at our shocked faces.
He was quick to anger, but equally swift to remorse. He had a wicked sense of humour and was playful, spontaneous and idiosyncratic.
He could memorise entire books of the Bible, reduce a room to tears of laughter, devour an entire loaf of bread in one sitting and convert strangers to Christ with a single conversation.
To quote Chris Wilkie, his best friend from high school: "David Balchin wasn’t always the easiest person to get on with, but he indelibly changed whatever life he encountered. His was a giant life".
I see so much of Dad in me. I have his strong calves and broad shoulders, despite never setting foot in a gym.
I have his large triangular nose, although thankfully not his thin top lip. I have his green eyes, his infinite freckles, his pale Scottish colouring.
I also inherited his temper, his intelligence, his love for literature and music, his stubbornness, spontaneity, gregariousness and secret love for solitude, despite being the life and soul of the party.
I am my own person, but I am also my father’s daughter.
I came into my father’s life when he was 38 years old. I knew him as a father, a preacher, a teacher, a friend.
But my dad lived many lives before I showed up. He was once a sickly little blonde-haired child, battling severe eczema and asthma in the snowy climes of Glasgow.
He was a lovesick teenager perpetually mooning over foreign exchange students, smoking illicit cigarettes high up in the plum tree, accidentally burning down the church hall with fireworks.
He was, for some time, a hard-drinking riotous young man, expelled from high school, getting up to serious mischief as a scarfie in Dunedin.
He worked at the steelworks and the abattoir, cycling home from work splattered in blood.
He travelled the world, taught English in Turkey and Japan and learned nine languages. He was a born-again Christian, fire-and-brimstone preacher, beloved father, son, brother and husband.
There is so much of my father I hope I never forget.
I know from the death of my brother how the passage of time can blur one’s memories, as the ocean softens glass.
There is such pain in realising I can no longer recall the exact constellation of my brother’s freckles, or the timbre of his voice. I don’t want to lose any more of my dad.
I wish I had my mother’s faith — her certainty in the knowledge she will see Dad again.
I wish I could rationalise all this hurt and pain and regret. I wish I could find solace in the idea that my father is somewhere in the sunlit lands of Aslan’s country, joking and laughing with his parents and my brother John.
Maybe I will find this peace and certainty one day.
I wonder what Dad’s final moments were like. Was it swift? Was it painful?
Did he know his heart was betraying him? Could he feel his wife trying desperately to revive him?
Mum says that as she ran off to get help, she looked behind her just once and saw my father curled up, like a possum, his hands clasped over his chest.
"That poor dear man", she said.
He looked at peace.
Dad absolutely adored the writings of C.S. Lewis.
I am reminded of a passage from The Last Battle: "All their life in this world and all their adventures had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no-one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before."
Vale Dad. I hope we’ll meet again.
David John Balchin. April 27, 1956-December 9, 2023.
- Jean Balchin, a former English student at the University of Otago, has finished her studies at Oxford University after being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship.
