Moment that changed my relationship with my father

Like many others, Laura Coffey will spend Father's Day remembering her dad. The author reflects on how grief works, the power of endings, and a memorable day out

I'm walking past a wall of posters for the Cezanne exhibition in London, on my way to the Underground. It seeps into me, this orange-ness, despite my efforts to avert my eyes. I drop them to the pavement but even though I won’t look at them directly, fat oranges sit on the edge of my subconscious all day. There’s an unexpected heaviness to oranges, a heft to them.

I know what Cezanne’s oranges are trying to tell me but I keep rolling them away from me. I am avoidant. I sulk. Then I do what I always do: panic and sweat and claw at the very last minute. I know I have to go.

The exhibition is completely sold out but a friend has a ticket for this afternoon. I make excuses, run from work, holding an umbrella against the rain. Suddenly, I’m there. I’m there in front of the Tate. I’m there in front of the oranges. “With an apple, I will astonish Paris,” said Cezanne. His words are printed high on the wall at the entrance to the exhibition.

Apples. Oranges. The painter. My father. I cast my mind back, looking for the start. Even though my father’s death three years ago was expected, it was still shocking. He had terminal cancer so we knew he had limited time, but towards the end, he went downhill very rapidly. The treatments had stopped working, he died earlier than the doctors hoped. In a way, though, he was lucky, he got to die at home like he wanted. And I was lucky to be there for his final days. Not everyone gets that chance.

But afterwards, it felt like I was under snow. Where do people go when they die? I’m not sure. For a long time, I kept looking for him, kept wanting to tell him things, and realising he wasn’t there.

I’m not sure how exactly memory works either. But there’s a bright one, in hyper-colour, that pulled me to the Tate on this day. At a guess, I would have been between 10 and 13, awkward and teenager-ish. I remember standing in the queue for tickets outside the gallery in London for a long while.