A FORTNIGHT AGO, my father died. He was 80.

Everybody has to die sometime, but I always believed an exception would be made in my father’s case.

I’m not saying he’s Superman, but no one has ever seen Colm Gallagher and Superman in a room together. Every child believes their father is invincible, but then they grow out of that belief. But for me, the illusion persisted.

Death stalked my father from the moment he was born.

In October 1945, in a nursing home by Huband Bridge on the canal, weeks after the end of World War II, my father, Colm, was born.

“Don’t get too fond of this one,” his mother was told. “He won’t last long.”

He was given a life expectancy of two, which should have taken him to 1947 – but he defied that prediction.

And 50 years later, in October 1997, Colm had a catastrophic stroke. I was a student in UCD at the time, and received a devastating out-of-the-blue telephone call, telling me to expect the worst. But he defied that prediction too, and even confounded the........

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