A cannon on the city walls of Dubrovnik, overlooking the Adriatic Sea.

Creaking and swaying, the ferry slowly pulled away from the port of Bari and chugged out over the Adriatic Sea into the night. In the indoor seating area, a group of Italian adults who were with a priest and appeared to be going on a pilgrimage, chatted excitedly and giggled like overgrown schoolchildren. As midnight approached the group quietened down, and it was comforting to hear the priest say some Vespers prayers. I tried to settle in the seat in the area that I had been ushered to but the fidgeting, loud “whispering” and general proximity of the big group was bothering me. I know that some ferries have strict rules related to seating areas and ticket prices. However, I decided to move to the large seating area behind which was almost completely empty, and snuggled down into a comfortable seat in the back row right next to the window hoping that, if I managed to sleep, no official would wake me up lecturing me about pricing rules.

The ferry whirred and rocked — I wanted to sleep so that I would be lucid whilst exploring Dubrovnik in the morning but also hated having to have the realisation all over again, every time I woke, that my Dad had gone. It was now three weeks since he had died. Before the gentle motion of the ferry eventually lulled me into a light sleep, I watched fireworks exploding over the south-east coast of Italy and flashes of lightning bursting high over the Adriatic. Observing these spectacular lights, without being able to hear the bangs and booms of their eruptions, just added to the surreal state that I was in and enhanced the general feeling of detachment that characterised my acute grief. In retrospect, I guess these lights penetrating through the dark night could have been considered a sign that my Dad’s soul was accompanying me on the ferry trip.

Nine hours after leaving Italy I stepped off the ferry in Croatia, breathed in the fresh air and saw the early morning light shining over rooftops and beaming down on a hillside of cypress and pine trees. After depositing my luggage I entered Dubrovnik through the Pile gate, where I was stunned by the gleaming pavement of limestone polished smooth over hundreds of years — its brightness magnified by the dark grey, silvery clouds floating above the city. I stopped for breakfast in the Placa, walked up to the Rector’s Palace and past the cathedral, through pretty alleys with walls densely covered with purple flowers, looked in an Orthodox church then strolled back to the Pile gate and climbed up onto the city walls.

The view facing south-east over the rooftops towards St Ignatius Church was entrancing. I wandered past the Bokar Tower, listening to the soothing roar of the waves around Fort Lovrijenac, and looked back along the city walls and up to Mount Srđ. As I continued along the walls, the scenery became more dramatic offering expansive panoramas of the coastline looking east and west. In my sleep-deprived daze, I felt utter desolation when I saw a lone sailing boat far south in an empty sea — the horizon beyond it was as unattainable as all my Dad’s retirement dreams now were, and the heaviness of this scene was intensified by the gloomy sky and murky sea.

In this state of disorientation I walked on, past an imposing cannon and an enormous palm tree, following the inviting path as it curved around the city walls. I was captivated by the sight of a café, nestled at the foot of the walls above jagged rocks with the Adriatic Sea swirling around them. As I stood and watched the waves splashing and crashing, I could picture my parents and Uncle David as young adults sitting at that café — they had driven across Europe together in the early 1970s, from England to Cyprus. I saw several slide shows of this road trip as a child and enjoyed my Mum’s stories of how she discovered goulash, of eating seafood in the Mediterranean sunshine, and of a drunken evening which resulted in a performance of a tap dance on top of a police car! My Mum has often mentioned how this trip reinforced the love that she had for my Dad, although they weren’t anywhere close to even being engaged then, and at how she was bowled over by the beauty of Dubrovnik which still belonged to Yugoslavia at that time. If it wasn’t for that love which was nurtured in Dubrovnik over forty years ago, and the lifelong commitment that it led to, I would never have got to be standing and looking at those waves at all.