My father died not quite two weeks ago, on Sunday 3rd May. He was aged 88. He was with fellow walkers from The Arthur Ransome Society (TARS), of which dad had been Secretary for many years.

He seems to have slipped while out walking on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. By all accounts it was a simple path, if also over rugged ground. Perhaps the path dropped away to the right, dad’s blind side. He seems to have had a short fall onto rocks and suddenly, incomprehensibly, he was dead.

I cannot get my head or heart around it. Oh my stubbornness in refusing to allow in a new loss. There is no space for another one. How can a person, a body, hold so many losses?

I know my patterns by now.

I know it and I don’t believe it.
He’s died and it’s not possible.
A mistake has been made, and I will get a call soon saying “Sorry, we got it wrong”.
I wish.
Magical thinking kicks in quickly.

I catch myself re-re-re-remembering he’s died, and I shake my head with incomprehension. The exact same shake of the head I did for so long after Mike’s and Julia’s deaths. A quick shake, like a cat shakes rain off fur. More of a shudder than a shake.

It was not the death I expected for him. Fool that I am for wanting things differently to how they are.

As healthy and full of life as he was, I had hoped he’d have a few more years in him for conversations, music, travel and ordinary moments. Time to read my book, due out in such a short while. More time to continue preparing myself for a world without him in it. More support following my already unfathomable losses. Just more time. Always more time. Even from an 88 year old.

And yet there is something so clear and aligned about the way he died. My father loved life deeply and revelled in each day’s ordinary beauty. The day after my brother James died (still so recent, at Christmas just gone), and while out on a local walk, my dad simply extolled the beauty of our surroundings and exclaimed, “This! How would anyone want to leave this? It makes me all the more determined to live — and fully.”

Dad was vitally alive, if also low-key. He would have hated a long illness, dependency or a slow fading away. His advanced care directives basically implied, “The day I can no longer do anything worthwhile, I want to do Exit.” (I told him that Exit didn’t work that way, and he was quite incredulous).

Such a precious honour and privilege to be out and about with the “Oldies”
3rd March 2026, Reynès, Pyrenees Orientales

Dad was engaged with life literally right until the end — still walking, hiking and even running and orienteering, still reading, still thinking, still contributing to orienteering and literary organisations, still playing piano most beautifully, despite losing sight in one eye.

Dad was a man of paradoxes, though he probably would not have described himself that way. He was deeply rational and intellectually rigorous, yet also profoundly gentle. He was not emotionally demonstrative, yet he was highly emotionally attuned, and I never once doubted that he loved me deeply. He could appear reserved, but beneath that reserve was warmth, steadiness, curiosity, humour and kindness. He listened well and with interest, and people of many generations would comment on the pleasure it was to engage with him.

Music ran through him like an underground current. He was (to my ears) an excellent pianist and, over the years, accompanied me and all of our children for piano duets, voice, saxophone, cello, flute, oboe and trumpet. I had told him I’d love to inherit his baby grand piano after he died. But I am not so sure now. For a start, I have nowhere big enough to put it.

Since his death, I have found myself playing piano almost every day, knowing already that this will be one of myriad ways I keep his memory alive.

I know too that I will read or re-read the Arthur Ransome “Swallows and Amazons” series of books. Even if I don’t enjoy them, I will find a way to know the books my dad loved since he was a child. In my childhood frivolity, I only ever read the book whose cover most appealed to my girlish eyes — “The Picts and the Martyrs”. I seem to remember it was more colourful. Perhaps now, 50 years on, I will understand more.

He was also very modest, never seeking attention, praise or fuss. His presence was gentle and familiar, yet his absence is vast and violent. Quiet people can leave the deepest silences behind them.

Dad didn’t believe in anything beyond the physical realm. He had given up religion well before I was born and claimed to be non-spiritual. He’d listen to the rest of us talk about mediums and signs from the spirit world, but would then shake his head and say, “But there’s no proof!” He needed evidence.

Having already consulted a trusted medium since he died, I have nevertheless found comfort in what she sensed. She experienced him as surprised by it all, but already helped along somehow and still close to earth because everything is so sudden and so recent. Rather than fighting anything, she sensed him allowing himself to be held, accompanied and supported by all those who have gone before — Edward, Mike, Julia, his own elders. James, she said, had checked in but was too busy doing his own work. Which makes perfect sense to me.

Dad’s spirituality was love and life. Which, for me, is what spirituality is.

He loved the great outdoors, beauty, music, reading, learning, conversation and family. He loved life and damn well lived it.

Just a couple of days ago, I had the good fortune to have an MDMA medicine day to help metabolise some of the shock and grief. What emerged strongly was the sense that Dad and I were complete. Yes, there is heartbreak and missing, grief and despair. I miss him, and will miss him, terribly. But there is no regret. There is no unfinished business, no incomplete conversation cleaving into my ache.

So this is my portrait of my dad: a thoughtful man, a musical man, a pragmatic and gentle man. A man who could be stubborn and gentle in the same sentence. A man who loved deeply without needing to speak it aloud. A man who remained curious and engaged until the very last seconds of his life. A man whose life shaped mine in more ways than I will ever know.

My heart is broken by his death. And my heart is full of gratitude that he was my father.

Go gently, sweet dad. You have been the perfect dad for me.
Thank you for being here so long.
I bow with love and in gratitude.

Your elder daughter,

Emma

Main picture taken in early March 2026, following a “big beard trim” from the local barber’s.

For most of his adult life, Dad was clean-shaven. During his 6+ week Haute Route des Pyrenees trek (about 20 years ago), he allowed his beard to grow. It grew red and bushy, in keeping with his ginger hair, and, perhaps surprisingly, my mum loved it.

Mum recently asked him to grow a beard again, and to both of their shocks, it came out more white than auburn. He let it grow and grow and grow, until various female members of the family (including neither mum nor me) despaired at his shagginess, and, reluctantly, he went to have it trimmed while I was visiting. I took this photo of him as he returned, in order to send it to the offended females in the family 😉

I sense him say something like, “Okay then, beard trimmed. Satisfied?”