Oy, he put up a fight! Year after year, Dad grumped and exploded his way through procedures, operations, scrapings and inflations.
My mother, his rock, redeemer, and a great force of nature, mentioned how she sometimes missed the sound of laughter.
I have seen many people lose parents, siblings, friends and - horror - even children. The most tragic losses are the ones in which there remains something unfinished.
As the minutes ooze from the time of death, that lingering becomes malingering, and pain follows close behind.
Dad made it easy for me, because he had been unwell for so long. I had time to tell him everything I wanted to say.
A few months before he died, he was at home for a brief period, inbetween hospital admissions. He sat in his armchair, my mum beside him on the sofa.
Hence to avoid melodrama, I had to tread carefully when trying to explain to my father that he had always been my inspiration.
I told him, in front of Mum, that he had been my inspiration throughout my life, in two different ways.
At a most vital level, I appreciated how hard he had worked; how many decades he had climbed into his car at 7.40 am, and driven off through the dirty sludge of London's constipated commute, all the way to Soho, where he worked all his life for Pearl and Dean.
At weekends he ran a small chain of three record shops, until one of his managers did the dirty, and sent the business down the pan.
From my privileged and relatively cushy life, I am in awe of how hard Dad worked, so that we might enjoy the upbringing we had.
His was the last generation that would ever enjoy the 'job for life' culture. Somehow, back in the early 1960's he earned enough money to take all five of us on holidays to Europe every other year, with trips to Devon and Somerset in the intervening summers.
"Thanks Dad!" I told him. "I didn't appreciate how hard you worked when I was a kid, but I do now."
My mum spluttered out that she thought that was very nice, and my Dad did something with his mouth that showed he was grateful.
“Well, it took a while for me to realise it, but all my travelling; the way I've lived my life; it's down to you. Didn't cop on when I was a teenager, because all that hitching just felt so good, and looked to me a million miles from the life you lived, and the one you wanted for me. But when I went off for my first roundy-worldy jaunt in 1984, you whispered ...
“So thanks Dad! You worked your arse off so that I might have a good childhood, and you also lifted my eyes, my horizons and my understanding of ambition, so that when I felt happy in my life, I knew that was success."
Unaware of where you were, or how close you had come to death, your first words as you opened your eyes:
“Who's ordering the wine for the party?”
You couldn't understand why we all fell about laughing.
I love you Dad.
I love you very much.
God knows, I miss you. The footie just ain't the same.