My dad died five years ago. I’ve learned it’s better to talk about death imperfectly than not at all | Owen Jones

I didn't have a proper vocabulary to talk about loss, but discovered that breaking the taboo was vital for healing

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 a bereavement. Why stand on it, if you have the choice?

Just over two weeks later, he was dead, but he wouldn't have felt disappointment in that moment of finality. Sometimes I wonder if he could hear his family in that hospice, whispering their love, or the baritone notes of the Bruce Springsteen songs we played. Before he fell ill, he used to loop around his armchair, clicking his fingers and roaring out the chorus as he listened to the Boss. His eyes seemed to moisten in those final moments, too. But was this a silent emotional response to his family wishing him farewell, or just another symptom of a human body shutting down for good?

Owen Jones is a Guardian columnist