Did my father know that his death was imminent? After he was wheeled back to my parents’ flat in Edinburgh for his last Christmas five years ago, delusion seemed to prevail. He was getting better, he reassured me; then aged 72, he insisted would make it to his 80s. But his eyes seemed to suggest otherwise: there was something about how they welled up as I blared Edward Elgar’s Nimrod from the living room speakers. He loved that variation. My mother hasn’t been able to listen to it since, because it’s one of those emotional landmines that grief lays after...