There was an item on this morning’s Today Programme about the Wellcome Trust choir, singing in hospital wards. (1’44” in, here.)

It brought back sharp memories. When my father was a Conscientious Objector serving in the Medical Corps, he formed a choir of the doctors and nurses, and the Ministry of Defence paid for part-song music which they sang, unaccompanied, to the sick on the wards.

Decades ago he passed the music on to us and, as a family, we have sung from the torn and battered sheets more often than I can remember. Often with my father.

Often without.

Just over a year ago, the choir I sing with met in our house instead of the vestry we usually use, needed for political hustings. I asked the conductor if we could leave the doors open, so that my 102-year-old father, now room-bound upstairs, could hear us.

If he could.

His hearing had long since grown dim.

After an hour and a half I went up to him. His face shining. His carer, too, effusive. They’d heard every word and it was like the voice of angels to them. He was overwhelmed when I said I’d also asked if a few could kindly stay behind and troop upstairs to sing for him specially.

In fact, everyone stayed.

We stood in a crowded semi-circle.

The tears streamed down his face as we sang. He grasped the hand nearest his – the conductor’s wife’s – and said,

In the war, we sang to those on the wards.

I had no idea… no idea at all… until this moment. How much it meant to them.

How much.

We asked him to choose. Steeped in carols all his life as he had been, his mind went blank.

Three King’s From Persian Lands Afar.

(One of my favourites, with its beautiful baritone solo.)

I sang that solo myself, my father said as we finished. In the BBC recording of the Nine Lessons and Carols.

In about 1937.

Because of that night, we sang to my father often again. So easy. So simple. So significant.

I invited other choirs to come to the house.

We sang to him as a family two nights before he died.

Our son Ben invited his semi-professional choir the next night.

All of us, round his bed, singing.

To thy rest.

Goodnight, sweet prince.

Far from home as we were when Advent descended, our daughter insisted we go next door and sing to the great-grandmother stranded alone.

She was so overwhelmed she couldn’t respond straight away. But later left a voice message. We had made, absolutely made, her Christmas and nothing else could possibly be as meaningful or comforting for her.

On Christmas Day, diminished as we were: only three of us available to sing. The Coventry Carol. Ben on the bass. Lara gamely sight-reading the tenor line. (Only I, with the tune, kept getting it wrong. The other two never thought to tell me we were singing the alternative version.)

I had asked on the local neighbourhood forum.

Does anyone know of anyone, I had written, who might need a carol beyond the doorstep over Christmas?

Yes! My neighbour is alone and widowed, wrote a stranger back. I am stuck in Tier 4 elsewhere. This is his address.

So we went. And we sang.

(And, sad to say, the old man looked terrified rather than cheered. But he left the door ajar so the sounds could drift in.)

My father was marinaded in music from birth. His mother a pianist. His father a hymn-writer. He a Chorister then Choral Scholar then Master Over the Choristers himself.

But even more than music, his life was saturated with service.

Every day, even unto the day he lay dying, he looked for ways to give his life to others.

His music, his gift to the world.