It took days for me to accept that the last time my father was there was not to order me around in his usual blustery way but to roll in quietly and inconspicuously, lifeless and cold on a gurney, and, unexpectedly, to call up deeply embedded feelings I never knew existed. Grief clobbered me on the head with the full force of a cricket ball and made me flounder, as if treading water in the deep, scared to drown in sadness.
