I have an obsessive personality, and I romanticise things. I inherited these from my parents; one apiece. My mum is the Great Romanticiser, a title that doesn’t exist and yet still demands to be capitalised. My dad was the obsessive. He also passed down many of the things he obsessed over. His love of music. His maintenance of his full head of hair, which stayed its natural dark brown until somewhere around his fiftieth birthday, when it turned silver overnight. Oh, and his need to make people laugh. It was his belief that there was never an inappropriate time to do it. With this, he led by example.

He said his last words to me when he was in the ICU, his head encased in a big oxygen tank. It looked like he was running late for a fancy dress party, and in a panic had thrown on anything he had to hand to go as an astronaut.

“It’s all right, Dad. You’re okay,” I said.

He half-glanced around the room, at all the tubes tangled around each other like charmed snakes, at the doctors magically clearing their path with some kind of authority beam, at the weird machines that blip in tones that reverberate through your skin; he took all of that in for a second and, with a comedic beat, said, “I’m not!”

On the night he died, my mum and I got a call from the hospital, recommending we come by. As we climbed into my dad’s car we shared a distinct feeling that this was it. It was dark, and the January rain was heavy. Even with fog lights we could only see a few steps ahead.

I wanted to start the car and, in a moment of romantic destiny, hear my dad’s favourite Beatles song. I wanted In My Life to soundtrack this. (I should caveat this with the fact that In My Life is not even my dad’s favourite Beatles song. It’s Norwegian Wood.) I almost put it on myself, overriding destiny, creating a satisfying ending. But I realised I couldn’t force anything. I couldn’t control anything. We had to plough on, not really being able to see ahead.

The song that did play was The Sing by Bill Callahan. I’ll never know if my dad had heard it.

“I’ve got limitations, like Marvin Gaye,” Bill Callahan sang. “Mortal joy is that way.”

Sometimes you don’t have to force romanticism. Sometimes it’s just there, if you let things be things.