Des's friend Seamus, who is 88, is dying—his liver is failing. He doesn't feel pain, thankfully, but he's sleeping most of the day, every day, what Des says is his body preparing to die. I am worried about Des. I visited him yesterday and today, bringing Sam to play with his dogs, and each time I could smell alcohol off him.

As we sipped coffee on the steps of his back door, Des pointed to his garden where the dogs were playing in the white-starred grass under the low-slung flowering trees, and said, "This, this is paradise." It was, and it is, and I marvelled how, in the midst of so much dying, there was spring, impertinent and glorious.

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