The photograph was nothing at the time; taken by an iPhone in a time oversaturated with photographs. They dominate travels, nights out with friends, weddings, Christmases, the first few years of a new baby, everything really.

We think nothing of having 10,000 of them on our device.

I think Dad was crying a little as we embraced. He usually did when I'd fly, one of the rare times I'd ever seen him tear up, and this time I was moving to Canada. His little girl, off to explore the world.

Eight months later, in a small town on the Niagara Escarpment, I held the ceiling of my car as my stepmother told me the diagnosis on a call. She was measured as she recited what she knew. His tumour was 2.5 centimetres. A bad rainstorm thrummed against my car. It was in his liver, she continued. It's treatable, she finished. Treatable. The word was a meagre liferaft but I clung on anyway.

I'd left Australia during our border closure, under a scheme to reunite with family - my partner is Canadian - but could I go back? Australia's border was closed. Fragments of news stories floated back to me.

A waitlist of 30,000 expats hoping to get home. I had no papers to guarantee I'd be allowed back into Canada either, back to my new home, my loved one. It's treatable, I reasoned to myself. I'll go back if it gets really serious, my stepmother and I agreed.

I spoke to Dad. He was soft-spoken but incredulous about his cancer. He did everything right. He was only 65, didn't smoke, ate his fruit, did yoga and laps. At the end of the call, I told Dad I loved him. We didn't say it that often, and it felt rectangular coming out of my mouth. "I love you too darling", he replied.

IN THE NEWS:

Three weeks later, on a Sunday at about 4:30am, I watched via Facebook Messenger's video chat from the other side of the world as my dad - in a stupor of morphine - breathed in front of me. Every breath was a breath of life, I thought while watching him, like the miraculous sound someone makes when they're resuscitated. My brother watched on video too, from far north Queensland. It was the end, a nurse had said.

His decline happened so fast - he had been walking just a couple of days before. But soon his hearing would be the last thing to go. I heard my brother say, clearly, "I love you, Dad. Go peacefully".

Don't go gently into that good night, or should we? In illness, we battle for life, relent against pain, stay strong against all the odds. But going peacefully out of this world - it's an ending any of us would be lucky to get.

The clarity of my brother's words touched me, even in my anguish. It was a beautiful invitation onward. And Dad went.

I dream about Dad. When I do, I know I'm dreaming, and that pulls the plug on the dream. In the moments before I'm tugged towards consciousness, I tell him I love him. He looks back, a little puzzled, and says it back.

Love is a doing word, so the saying goes. We said it through our routine of jokes so well worn they were fraying. We said it through hour-long phone calls we'd begin to wind up, but still be on, 20 minutes later.

We said it through schnitzel dinners at Maryville Tavern together, in our parallel lanes doing quiet laps at Mayfield pool, during our trips to Europe together, in our matching gin and tonics at dusk while lamenting the buffoons of Australian politics.

My dad made me feel invincible. It was like, no matter what happened to me, no matter the failure or heartbreak that life could bring, I knew I always had the love of this great man, who would jump at a moment's notice to care for me. Dad loved me, but I knew he really liked me too.

As a kid, Dad would leave chocolate bars in my pencil case, a delight when I'd go for a pen during my first class at school. He gave up every winter's Saturday mornings to watch my netball games at National Park, a windchill that seemed now even colder than the Canadian weather.

As I began working as a journalist, Dad would email the links of my articles around. Sometimes he'd call. He'd marvel down the phone to me, dazed by the article, incredulous about its place on the homepage. Love is a doing word.

I felt so proud of Dad, too. He was an honest lawyer, the Elsworthy Solicitors sign sitting high on his castle - an office above Talulah at The Junction. He lived with so much integrity and so much love for others. He'd heavily discount his clients' legal work without a second thought. I'll never forget when Dad refunded a young client $1000 because it had taken him less time than he'd budgeted to resolve the issue.

He gave people a shot, and he believed people were good.

We talk about grief as an experience, something that happens to you, but really, grief becomes part of you. It rounds you out as a person. It gives you wonder about what's next, and about the eternal "Why" of it all.

And it gives you gratitude. For the human memory, for the ability to dream, for video chatting, and for photographs.

A photograph of a last embrace that means nothing in the moment, but means everything in the wake of it.

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