This time 3 years ago I was sat beside my dad waiting for him to die. Only 6 short months previously after some minor health niggles and suddenly struggling to do his usual level of manual work as a bricklayer, my fit, strong 62 year old dad was suddenly being probed and scanned to discover that the insidious sneaky bastard we call cancer had been gnawing away at his lungs and guts to the point it couldn’t be stopped. Our world was suddenly and horrifically turned upside down as we tried to comprehend he would soon be gone. The man who had been my dad for nearly 40 years, the man my children called granddad, my mother’s husband and best friend of the best part of 5 decades was dying.

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