Dad died seven years ago today. In many ways it was a release. At the age of 93 he was physically unable to do too much for himself and mentally he had been unhappy for a few years. A man used to being always active he became too weak to do very much over the last couple of years. This, and his diminishing eyesight, made him fretful.
As a result I tend not to think of him as he was during those last few years, or as he would be now (100!) but as he was during the 1960s and ‘70s – pipe in mouth, and either sitting with the Liverpool Echo in his hands or walking in the Lake District.
And that, I am sure, is also how he would wish to be remembered.
