Darkness had descended on the garden and I noticed that my father’s windows still stood open. Normally by that time he would have come inside to administer the daily ritual of afternoon tea.
He and my mother had come to live with us in a self-contained flat some 10 years before. My mother had passed quietly away after a couple of years leaving my father to become a fixture in the lives of his grandchildren, always to be found working somewhere in the garden during the day, or in his sitting room in the evenings, pleased to receive their company.
From my office window I could see that his car was in the garage, so I knew he had not gone out. Arming myself with a torch I set out to investigate.
He had always joked that he would be happy to die on his tractor lawnmower – a sort of British version of Don Vito Corleone keeling over in his garden while playing with his grandson. I believe Vito’s last words in the novel were, ‘Life is so beautiful.’
And there I found my father, sitting on the tractor in its shed, struck down by his heart in just the same manner as Vito, exactly the end he had hoped for. Life can indeed be beautiful.