Maddie and I were talking about Hamlet earlier; how the archetypal murder-your-uncle-to avenge-your-dads death started out. Was it, she conjectured, from the Egyptian mythos, when the jealous Seth hacks up his brother and scatters bits of him across his empire: and his beloved Isis travels the length and breadth of the empire to collect all the bits back together again for that one last dance, the conception of a son. Osiris, the once-born, tracks down his uncle and kills him. Did Shakespeare create such a masterpiece by drawing on an old Egyptian myth?

For me, the dramatic archetypal event of the murder of Hamlets father, an esteemed king grown frail, cannot cover up a central pillar in the Shakespearean masterpiece: the desolation of loss. The space where the beloved is not: the realisation that everything in this strange phantasmagoria is temporary, and we, in this reality, are tumbleweed.

My father had dementia. They call it the long goodbye. I have always dreaded it for myself and my loved ones. I first noticed it when Dad, my father the natural navigator, would agree to go and collect one of my children – but would fastidiously trace the route on Google Maps before setting out. There was the heartbreaking day when I found this intuitive engineer with a lifetime’s acclaim behind him, fumbling with a doorbell, trying to replace its batteries. His skills drained away, and his cognition left him as a child.

But if you see with the right eyes, something else is happening.

My wonderful partner asked my father to teach him morse (Dad was one of the best operators in Britain). Every Wednesday morning, regular as clockwork. They became great friends. My dad would begin to bring his poetry book and memories along with him when he came to teach The Celt; and slowly, as his cognition left and he was no longer able to teach his customary material, they fell to talking, and indeed, to Being.

My father began to shed the things of this world; driving, working, even reading; instead I began to notice him staring in wonder at things in the distance, settling into moments, discovering patience and joy and surprise and delight. I will swear he became brighter, quite literally: he glowed. I think he suffered a lot, and there is a lot I don’t know about that; but he put me in mind of a sentence from Rumi: “Having chosen your directon, be not weak of heart, nor yet sluggish as water and mud. If you take umbrage at every rub, how will you become a polished mirror?”

My father became a polished mirror. As he realised his cognition was leaving him he grasped the chance to be tranquil with me, his eldest daughter. We began to realise that actually, just being with each other is its own language and it doesn’t need congnition. I found a wonderful illustrated edition of Wind in the Willows to read him towards the end, full of familiar words and breathtaking and very English landscapes. I read him the story of Toad’s first sight of the motor car. And as I walked out that day, he beamed at me. He said: “Kate, there’s still so much to listen to!”

And there is. Now he has gone so many need to talk and share, to make sense of a long life of contentment and invention, with children and grandchildren, and creativity through to the end. It falls away, the life you live, because you travel light as you leave this planet.

Godspeed, Dad.