Last weekend a woman in England contacted me to say that her recently deceased father had been on the same ship as my father, when they were torpedoed during the Second World War. After a couple of email exchanges, she sent me a photograph of the survivors. My father is among them, standing at the back, but nearly a head taller than everyone else, looking young, confident, fresh-faced and excited by life. This is a photograph that none of us have ever seen before, yet it was so clearly dad, so easily identifiable, that when I forwarded it to Greg, Rachel and Derek there was no need to point dad out.

It was nearly 67 years ago. It staggers me to think that that photograph has been in existence, in the custody of strangers who had quite independent reasons for preserving it, but that it has finally come to us, only a few weeks after dad's death. And the contrast between how dad looked then and how he looked the morning he died just serves to emphasise what a long long way we travel in a lifetime.

Some weeks ago I had a rather unusual dream. Dad was standing to my left. I recall vividly that he was wearing a check shirt and seemed considerably shorter than I am, and than he was himself in his prime. In the dream I was having to explain to him that he was dead. Bizarrely, I was using all sorts of colloquilisms - or euphemisms, perhaps. 'You've kicked the bucket, dad. You're pushing up daisies.' 'Am I? he said. He wasn't taking it very well. His reaction was that of confused resignation, a feeling that things were just out of his control and could not be improved, that what he had hoped for was now unattainable. As the conversation wore on I was telling him he had to go, that there was no two ways about it, so he might as well just accept it. It was certainly not pleasant, but nor was it unpleasant. it just took place.