When my father was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour and given just a few months to live, many people told me that at least we would have the chance to talk and say goodbye. Friends urged me to make sure I said what I wanted to before it was too late. As I had always had a warm and loving relationship with my father, I expected a desperately sad and poignant time, full of weighty conversations, paternal wisdom and meaningful moments in sunlit rooms.
But it wasn't quite like that. My father didn't talk much about dying and we didn't have any serious conversations about the meaning of it all. There was no Last Lecture or the near rapturous reckoning that Philip Gould found in his short film, Lessons from the Death Zone. Rather, Dad was reticent, nonchalant and somewhat detached. Much of this was due to his condition: his brain had been dulled, as he said; he knew what he wanted to say, but couldn't find the words. But it was also because he didn't see any point in talking about death.
I was drinking pink champagne – an early Valentine's celebration with my wife – when I found out he was dying. It was Dad who called, but he passed the phone over to my mother. It wasn't easy, she said, but they had some bad news. An inoperable brain tumour. My mother's voice cracked and I took a deep glug of champagne.
From then on, the words between us were difficult – so unlike how it had always been. I started with macho bravado, hoping to put him at ease: 'Well, this is a bit shit, isn't it?' Something, a sigh, a nervous chuckle, perhaps. 'Well, to be honest,' he said, 'I'm not as down about it as you might think.' Then, tears swallowed, shunted away, we sought refuge in the practical, the clinical details: was there anything that could be done? Was it inoperable? Then flights, train times, my home phone, which he wanted me to get fixed.
At home in Cornwall, Dad was dying the way he lived, with a quiet, understated enthusiasm. The banality of it all unnerved me. Shouldn't we be talking man-to-man about his life, his fears, his wishes for his grandchildren, instead of listening to the World at One and eating cheese sandwiches? After a few days of coffees, walks and cake, I thought, Dad, you don't have to be so stoic about this, show some fucking reaction, don't just sit there listening to University Challenge without even trying to get anything right.
Throughout the last weeks of his life, this need to have a meaningful father-son conversation became an obsession. I know why I snooped around on his desktop that day. I was looking for something, anything, that told me how he was feeling, about his illness, his life, his death. On his computer, on the desktop, there was a simple text file called Diary. In it, there were various things for him to remember: the times when friends and family were visiting, something about the dog. The last item in the list was for a dental appointment in January 2013. Appended to the entry, he had written, 'If I'm still around.'
