Early April 2012 5.30am

Nan had slipped away in the early hours. We were half-expecting it, but even so, it hurt. So, we stayed up all night, talking, and drinking milky tea. And as daylight broke, we went to the beach to watch the sunrise.

It was a warm morning. As the sky stretched and yawned, Mum, my sister, and I huddled over a piping flask of coffee. The sand was cold and as light breeze whispered in from the darkness. Even though her mother had only died a few hours earlier, Mum couldn’t stop talking about our Dad and his refusal to visit a doctor.

She sipped her coffee. “Dad and I came here when we were courting back in the late sixties. We were sat on that headland over there. We cuddled for hours and with my head on his chest, I could hear his heart beating. I remember thinking even then, what would I do if it stopped beating?”

Late April 2012

Hidden away in the middle room of their Victorian house sat my father. Dad was never social, yet seeing him on the settee, reading the papers and listening to the cricket on a small portable radio seemed poignant. While the house around him buzzed with life and laughter, he'd shut himself away as life carried on around him.

Looking back, I think he knew then that he was ill. Back in2008, when my sister Mari was diagnosed with cancer in her knee, my Dad lost his voice. We thought it was the shock. But even when Mari came out the other side, Dad's voice never made it. We had lost the voice of our childhood.

But since early 2012, it wasn't just his voice that worried us. His breathing had become a real struggle. We could hear him from the other end of the house. When we'd ask why he was struggling, he'd act surprised.

But eventually, he started avoiding the questions by retiring to the sitting room and making himself a little haven. When I saw him there, he seemed to have shrunk into the settee. He wasn't the giant of a man who had scooped me up in his arms and thrown me up into the air as a kid, only to catch me again and give me one of those big hugs that only dads give.

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