We used to walk and not talk much. A road, a bit of weather, the same route home. That was enough. I would take another of those walks now.

Kwame was the person you called when something needed doing. He did not ask a lot of questions. He just came, and he stayed until it was finished. I still catch myself waiting for his van on the street.

He kept tools in order and promises the same way. If he said he would come, he came. A quiet man, and a steady one. That was the whole of it, and it was plenty.

Dad never missed a school play. He sat in the back and clapped the loudest, then found you afterwards as if that had been the only thing on his day. It probably wasn't. He made it seem so.

He taught us more by how he lived than by what he said. Show up. Keep the promise. Leave a place kinder than you found it. I hear him in those habits now, more than in any speech.

This photograph is how I will remember him — at ease, and glad to see you. Looking at this picture I can hear him telling the story behind it, as if we had just come in from the garden.

I still expect to see him in the garden in the late afternoon, the way he stood with his hands in his pockets as if he had all the time in the world. The grandchildren thought he did. He made it feel that way.

He would have asked if you'd eaten, then put the kettle on.

Rest well. We'll look after the people you loved.

He had a quiet way of making you feel you could handle it.

I'll keep this one. He looks like himself here.

Thank you for the early coffee and the late advice.

We are better for having been loved by Kwame.

I found his handwriting in an old notebook. It stopped me in the hallway.

He remembered names. Of neighbours, of colleagues, of the person at the shop.

This is the smile from the doorway.