On the day, my dad died, there were three phone calls amongst many others

The first was at 10:30. I made it from the office of Latymer Christian Fellowship to home. Dad was terminally ill. I knew that. I spoke to my younger brother. Sibling words were exchanged. Words that in the moment were meant and the day after meant little were spoken. I knew I would not make it. Ladbroke Grove to St Pancras would be thirty minutes, and then the trains. I sat in worship. Victor spoke. I had no clue what he was saying, even though he was a skilled expositor. I spoke to my minister, should I stay or should I go. He advised me to stay. At least that is what my memory banks now tell me. ‘Are you coming?’. The train would have got in just after three, and then there would have been the bus. I did not go. I regretted it then. I regret it now. I would have been late, but at least I would have tried.

He was a good man, said someone on his housing estate a couple of days before his funeral. Too right, he was a good man. There was an old Pentecost chorus that I sang in my brief sojourn in the Elim Church in Southey Green. It goes something like this: ‘when God looks at me, he sees not what I used to be, but He sees Jesus’. Theologically, that is true. But in some ways, the best of me is from my parents. My dad’s deep melancholy brown eyes. His moist eyes as he emotionally engaged with people.

I remember the moistness of his eyes when he was made redundant. I was 16. Maggie did it. Well that is both true and not true. Sheffield was decimated with unemployment. He coped at first by going inward (that is me), and then he went outwards: art and walking. I still have one of his painting of the cooling towers that are not there any more near Meadowhall. No one should be thrown on the scrap heap.

I had been home the weekend before. We had had a family meal. Dad had sent me back to London with Jennifer. We had been married only two years. She was a House Officer working incredibly long hours. Dad cared about that. He loved her.

At about 1pm, I phoned home. Doris answered. She was a family friend. Everyone had gone to hospital. Dad had been taken in. I could not get there now. The Fellowship were in the park having a picnic. It was a warm day in July. It was suddenly cold. It would not be long now, I thought. 12 weeks earlier, I had sat with him on that hospital bed. The consultant came round. A few years before this he had had half a lung removed. His recovery had been great. The consultant explained that the cancer had returned, and Dad would have 12 weeks. That is what he had. Dad asked me to tell Mum, who was yet to arrive at the hospital. A trainee chaplain came round and asked how my Dad was doing. Dad replied with a smile, ‘I am dying’. He was a believer; he was so confident about going to be with his Lord. I wonder whether I will be as confident when my time comes.

I tell my Mum. She is devastated. I get the train back to London to listen to a professor speak at the graduate seminar I am part of. I had not completed my PhD then. Dad wanted me to go back. He loved education. He loved me unconditionally. I have no idea what the professor talked about. Dad did not get the opportunity to study as I had done.

Just after four I ring home again. Mum answered. Dad died at three in the afternoon as his vicar read the words of the Nunc Dimittis which begins ‘Lord, now let your servant depart in peace’. Apparently, someone told my Dad that I was there before he died. I so wanted to be. Death is not nothing at all, despite the poem that is read at funerals. It is evil. It is the great destroyer. He died peacefully, as Mum released him. The vicar was a decent, hardworking man. Dad would have been devastated with how the local church abandoned my mum in the years that followed.

He was a good, brave man. The difference between him and me. I fear my own shadow at times. He was not. Sheffield steel was embedded in his soul. That is my prayer for the day that I will have a transplant.

George Ellis: I miss you. We will meet again. Of that, I am sure.