Who is Merv Pickles from Cloudstreet and what is their importance?

Merv Pickles is the father of Sam Pickles. Merv has already died when the novel opens, and has a role in the book only through Sam's memories and the occasional sensation he has of smelling his dead father, beside whom he slept when he was a boy. Sam found Merv dead in bed beside him one morning. Merv's job was finding water with a divining rod, a luck-based occupation through which Sam learned his ideas about the shifting nature of good and bad luck.