MY father would have been 100 last week. In fact he died at 70, 30 years ago. The unfamiliar word Alzheimer’s appeared on his death certificate. He had become muddled, fretful, aged before his time.

His death robbed my mother of his companionship in their old age, robbed my children of knowing their grandfather, and robbed him of a quiet and comfortable retirement. It is easy to start wondering ‘what might have been’ had he lived longer.

Other people lose their loved ones at earlier ages: children their parents, parents their children, husbands their wives and wives their husbands, sometimes in the prime of life. The question ‘what might have been’ is a painful one.

As the years go by, more of the people I have loved are dead. In Christian language we call them the ‘departed’ – souls who are not extinct, but all the same are not here. We pray that they ‘rest in peace’. I take comfort from my Christian conviction that I can hold them up in prayer to God. Though they are ‘departed’ from me, they are present to him. And we are approaching All Souls’ Day (2 November) when the Church remembers all the ‘departed’ in the presence of God, and prays for their peace.

My father died at the age of seventy. In today’s terms that seems premature. In earlier generations it seemed a good age to have reached. ‘The days of our life are threescore years and ten’, wrote the Psalmist (Psalm 90), ‘or if our strength endures, even four score’. To live to seventy then was natural, to live to eighty was exceptional. But our life expectancy has increased. Many of us will live to a hundred, and we are all being tempted to look forward to an autumn of our lives that will be sunny, healthy, happy and long. The film industry has given us movies that celebrate the possibilities of love and adventure for the elderly, and the advertising industry entices us with the comforts and luxuries of old age. We are in danger of believing that retirement is what life is all about.

Perhaps we need to moderate our expectations. Perhaps we need to concentrate more on the present moment, and less on an imaginary future. The question ‘what might have been’ does no one any good.

PETER ATKINSON, Dean of Worcester