At my mother’s interment, my brother gave a eulogy by the grave. ‘Mum and Dad bought this plot on my 24th birthday,’ he said. ‘But it only came with a 50-year lease. So if I manage to survive to the age of 74, I hope I have enough savings left to buy an extension!’ In spite of my sadness, I smiled. It was just like Tom to try to lighten the mood. He was 55 and I was 53 and 74 seemed a long way off. Two and a half years later, I was standing by the grave again and Tom was in it.

‘Dying,’ says the poet Sylvia Plath in her poem ‘is an art, like everything else. I do it