John MacLeod has described the prolonged decline and death of his father, recounting years of caregiving, episodes of rage and confusion, late-night morphine administration and a complex mix of grief and relief.
MacLeod said the family’s involvement intensified after a diagnosis in January 2019 and that his father — a theologian who continued lecturing until October 2022 — entered a period of gradual deterioration. Hospitalisation late in 2022 led to the end of his public duties, and relatives watched as his hearing, mobility and appetite diminished before he died in May 2023.
In a first-person account published in a national newspaper, MacLeod detailed how his father’s behaviour shifted during the decline: sudden rages, tantrums, the flinging of objects and repeated catastrophising over minor events. He said the father increasingly denied hearing loss, began to lip-read unconsciously and sometimes misunderstood ordinary conversation. MacLeod described one classroom moment in which his father mistook the word “clover” for “cleaver.”
As the illness progressed, MacLeod said the family administered morphine to ease pain and distress, often in the middle of the night. He recounted a moment at about 3 a.m. when a dispute over dosing led him to throw the spoon; he said his father then looked at him “hurt, childlike, with this terrifying vacant expression.” On another occasion MacLeod said his father procured a tranquilliser, hid it and later raged when family members asked whether he had taken it.
The writer described practical and logistical strains: decisions about embalming, clearing decades of household possessions and the frequent presence of ministers. He said he disposed of unused morphine and made runs to supermarket car parks to decant clothes and other items into relief skips. Amid those chores, MacLeod recounted occasional uncanny experiences — hearing his father call his name, doors opening by themselves and seeing his father’s face in the clouds — which he reported as part of his grieving process.
MacLeod wrote that the relationship with his father had always been “uneasy, off-balance.” He said they were alike in temperament and that, unlike his brothers, he had kept his inner life private. Years of warmth, myth and practicality alternated with disputes and demands. The columnist also recalled episodes of tenderness: family laughter, theological debate and the domestic routines of care that accompanied the final years.
He referenced the author C.S. Lewis to frame his experience of bereavement, quoting Lewis’s line, written after the death of his wife, that “grief felt so like fear.” MacLeod said he did not feel fear but recognised familiar physical sensations in bereavement: restlessness, a fluttering in the stomach and swallowing to steady oneself.
Following his father’s death, MacLeod said his mother moved to Glasgow, where she established a new routine, reading frequently and remaining engaged in daily life. On a visit in May of the year following his father’s death, he said he walked past places from his childhood and halted at Scotstounhill station, where he had once met his father returning from college. There, he said, he realised “Daddy would come no more for ever” and felt a distinct finality.
MacLeod noted his father’s theological conviction that heaven is a physical place, a belief he said stood in contrast with authors such as C.S. Lewis. He described that conviction as part of his father’s identity and suggested it offered a framework for the family’s sense of meaning after the death.
The account combines practical details of end-of-life care with recollections of family dynamics and small moments from a long life in ministry and teaching. MacLeod’s piece concludes with the image of leaving the station and returning home with the sense that his father’s laughter had become a mist — a final memory that, he wrote, accompanies the emotional work of grieving and the slow process of sorting and letting go.