2 days ago
‘I am forever changed by the loss of this special man': Sophie Grenham on grief, loss and gratitude as she faces her first father's day without her dad
Dad avoided public speaking like the plague, but I know he would have been proud of my standing there talking about him, even if he disliked being the centre of attention. My family and I didn't make an official announcement about his funeral arrangements as we wanted to keep the ceremony simple. So, six months on, this is my public tribute to my father.
Michael John Langford Grenham, known to most of us as Mike or 'Hong Kong Mick', was born in Holles Street Hospital in 1946, a post-war baby that his mother called her miracle child. Olive Grenham (née Jones) was an entrepreneur from Cork city, and his father Jack Grenham was a London-born ex-navy commander and insurance broker with Irish roots. My father spent his childhood in Hong Kong, where his parents were based, and went to boarding schools in Switzerland and England.
While photography would become his profession, he first studied economics at Trinity College Dublin. It was in his final year there that he met my mother, Margaret, who worked in a boutique off Grafton Street. They were quickly married and had two sons, Michael and Nicholas. I arrived almost 10 years later.
Dad always bought the school uniforms and took us to Clarks for shoes. He read my bedtime stories and did the funny voices, and often drew a cartoon serpent which he made up. When we went swimming, I climbed on his back and we dove down into the deep end, pretending to be whales. He had a mischievous sense of humour and was full of stories about his younger years and Hong Kong, the place where he was most happy.
In 1985, he moved us to Hong Kong, where we stayed for 12 years. The deaths of my grandparents, which happened within a few weeks of each other, was what brought us to live there. They owned a couple of properties and a small business that my grandmother started after the war – a crystal and china shop called Grenley's, which sold everything from Waterford Crystal to Royal Doulton Beatrix Potter figurines.
As a child, I did not enjoy regularly having a camera in my face, but I now appreciate his persistence
My parents had an opportunity to escape 1980s recession-hit Ireland and live in the beautiful apartment that was left to us, to educate their children at excellent international schools and to breathe new life into my grandmother's shop. They had many prominent customers, including Chris Patten, the last governor of Hong Kong, who I'm told once minded the shop while my mother ran out to buy takeaway coffees. Other clients were Imelda Marcos and, less controversially, John Travolta, who was looking for aviation-themed glassware for his plane. My mother was the face of the company while Dad managed the accounts. He kept up his photography on the side, shooting many catalogues and other commercial work.
We are incredibly fortunate to have hundreds of photographs taken by Dad over the years on the finest film. As a child, I did not enjoy regularly having a camera in my face, but I now appreciate his persistence. I'm often in portraits wearing a less-than-impressed expression, but there are some genuinely lovely ones in the collection.
I recently realised that he captured my earliest memory. It was early in the morning and I was peeping through the bars of my cot, and I could hear cooing and other encouraging sounds. Those sounds were my parents, Dad with a camera in his hand as usual. Sure enough, the moment is there in an album.
One of my fondest memories is when I was about 16 and we were at a holiday home in Crosshaven, Co Cork, which had belonged to my grandparents. My father decided to photograph me sitting in a bed of bluebells in the garden. Having an intense fear of bees and wasps, I protested at having to do this while the buzzies loomed large. Dad told me I was being silly as he clicked shot after shot, each minute seeming to last an hour. When the arduous task was over and I was free, he set about clipping the hedges. I was safely away when in my peripheral vision, I noticed a figure legging it across the lawn. In my own words from the time: 'I've never seen something so big move so fast!' It transpires there was a wasp's nest and Dad got stung – and I was never so vindicated. My mother and I laughed about this for years, and even he could manage a wry smile.
I have few photographs of me with my father because he was usually the one behind the camera. Many photographers are shy about turning the lens on themselves, but when Dad occasionally did this, you would invariably see his cheeky side. I'm very fond of a self-portrait he took with a matinee idol pose.
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One of his favourite jobs was photographing the late Sean Connery in Marbella… 'Tall' was the first word he used to describe the ultimate Bond
After we came back to Ireland, he had his own darkroom at our family home in Churchtown. As a young father, he went door-to-door offering his services as a family photographer. He shot portraits, christenings and many, many weddings. His images have hung in homes all over Dublin for decades and I would bet that some of them are still there. He later moved into the field of fashion and design, and worked freelance for several prominent advertising agencies, newspapers and magazines.
One of his favourite jobs was photographing the late Sean Connery in Marbella. Unfortunately, we don't have the negatives as Dad wasn't in a position to keep them, but he said that Connery was easy to work with and quite an affable chap. 'Tall' was the first word he used to describe the ultimate Bond.
Away from the camera, Dad was a rugby fanatic who watched Munster at every opportunity. He was also an avid fisherman, and helped my brothers choose their first fishing rods at Rory's Fishing Tackle in Temple Bar. He and owner Rory Harkin were friends and I remember hanging around the shop while they caught up. Wherever Dad went when I was a youngster, chances are I was with him. I often kept him company on the banks of the River Dodder while he climbed in wearing waist-high waders. He loved taking us on little adventures, and could make even a dreary trip to the dump into something daftly fun.
I have Dad to thank for my love of art, photography and travel, and we took a few trips together. In 2009, we went to New York where we stayed in a friend's apartment on the Upper East Side and explored the city. I had been before many times, Dad only briefly. On our first full day, we were heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and had to cross Park Avenue, one of the city's main arteries. I had just made it across and assumed Dad was right behind me but when I turned, he wasn't there.
Instead, he was on one of the islands in the middle of the busy road, face down in a bed of tulips. I thought, 'what the flip is he at?' It turns out he had put his camera right down into the flower bed and shot as if from the perspective of an ant. For the rest of the trip, he didn't stop snapping pictures of bright blooms that were planted all over the city – never mind the great architectural structures we feasted our eyes on – and so began his obsession with floral art, inspired by the great American artist Georgia O'Keeffe.
One summer, we displayed a selection of his works in a solo exhibition in Marlay Park's Orangery. He spent a lot of time in this beautiful green space as well as the National Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, where he got to know many of the groundskeepers.
Dad was hugely supportive of my journalistic endeavours and when I started out, he gave me my first art portfolio in which to house my clippings. I came home one evening after a gruelling day working in a department store and there it was sitting on my bed. We collaborated many times when he took pictures to accompany my articles. Our earlier subjects include the late visual artist Charlie Whisker, author Julia Kelly, and former Late Late Show host Ryan Tubridy. His final portrait was of author Neil Hegarty when I interviewed him for The Gloss Magazine in 2019.
Sadly, Dad's mental and physical health declined in recent years, not helped by the great loss of my dear brother Michael in 2012 after a long illness. A series of falls led to three hospitalisations for Dad in the winter months, until one big fall in 2023 signalled the beginning of the end.
Dad was bed-bound for a year until one night he took a turn, and after a week he slipped away on the eve of his 78th birthday.
Now, his urn sits by my living room fireplace with a vase of fresh flowers for company. Words can't quantify the gaping sinkhole his absence has created. They say that one becomes an adult when a parent dies, and I know this to be true. Anyone who has watched a loved-one deteriorate in front of their eyes knows the devastating impact it has on their world.
It took a lot of psyching up to view them, realising it may be the last time I see Dad's photographs for the first time
I assumed I would have another few years with Dad, and can't help but feel robbed even though I am grateful and honoured to have been his daughter for 41 years. I am forever changed by the loss of this special man, the person I was closest to in my family. I miss talking to him about the places I've been since, special projects I've worked on or funny things I've seen.
My mother and I are currently purging the family house of excess possessions, and on one of my visits, I looked in a drawer and found five rolls of film which had been undeveloped. As if finding buried treasure, I made my way to the John Gunn Camera Shop on Wexford Street and asked them to process them. John Gunn had known my father since 1971. Understandably, I tried to stop the tears from falling as I told him what happened. Some of those rolls of film were over 20 years old, hard worn by time, but they feel like one of Dad's last gifts to me.
When I opened the files of those scanned images, I was trepidatious but that feeling swiftly gave way to joy and even laughter. I found shots of the old house in Crosshaven; myself as a university undergraduate quietly studying; earlier pictures where I had a terrible short haircut when I tried, in vain, to copy Gwyneth Paltrow's style from the movie Sliding Doors; and my brother Michael's 30th birthday in our kitchen in Churchtown. It took a lot of psyching up to view them, realising it may be the last time I see Dad's photographs for the first time. Though, knowing his hoarding tendencies, there are possibly other treasures hidden in other drawers and I hope I find them all.
Dad's cousin Bill Jones gave me some valuable advice. He told me that my father wanted me to have a good life, and I am going to ensure that I don't waste opportunities to travel and be out engaging with the world. Dad didn't always get it right, but he was a kind, loving person who let me be who I wanted to be.
I've been dreading my first Father's Day without him as I'd usually have a plan for us. However, I am not going to sit at home and feel sad. I'm going to do things that I know he would have enjoyed. Many people have told me that your relationship with a loved one doesn't end when they die. I can confirm this to be true. He's with me all the time. Dad often said that life goes on, and I owe it to him to live mine.
