The script writer for games, comics and film remembers her father’s gift for observation, his love of nature and an idyllic childhood filled with wonder, wildlife and cats • Read the Observer’s obituaries of 2015 in full here • Henning Mankell remembered by Kenneth Branagh

My father talked about death a lot. He believed that we should be more like our Victorian forebears who, although rather bashful when it came to talking about sex, regarded death as a much more comfortable topic of conversation. It’s the great unifier. No matter who you are, one day the reaper will come for you.

He didn't teach me magic. He showed me it

The reaper came for my father much earlier in his life in the form of Death from his world-famous and much-loved Discworld novels. Death was a towering, cloaked and scythe-wielding skeleton who had a penchant for curries, a love of cats and TALKED LIKE THIS. We got a number of tear-inducing letters from fans who were nearing the end of their lives and took great comfort in imagining that the death that came for them would be riding a white horse called Binky. Dad had done something with more success than anyone else – he made Death friendly.

For me, as for many of his fans, it was his gift for characterisations like this that made his books pure narrative gold. Dad was a great observer of people. And when he ran out of actual people, he was a great imaginer of them. Both his grannies come through in his witch characters, while there’s a fair chunk of me in Tiffany Aching and Susan Sto Helit, Death’s adoptive granddaughter. He always said that he was most like the brusque Commander Vimes, raging against injustice. But he was a little like Death too; always loved a good curry and Pratchetts have cats like other people have bathrooms.

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Certainly, Dad’s Vimes-esque raging came to the forefront when he received his Alzheimer’s diagnosis at 59 and realised how little support there was for the disease in this country. Through his personal donations and public campaigning, he raised awareness and research support exponentially. Likewise, his passionate advocacy for assisted dying was vitally important in raising awareness of the fact that a good death should be as important as a good life. He would have been horrified that our politicians have failed to see that.

The outpouring of grief and support that accompanied the announcement of his death was overwhelming. But that was no surprise, as his work was as loved as he was. At his funeral, I carried his sword, holding it level to my chin as a salute to a leader and crossing it to my heart as the coffin was lowered. Being a practical kind of a knight, he had to make his own sword; using iron ore collected from our land, smelted in a kiln formed from sheep dung and clay. He even added a nugget of meteorite, giving the sword its name – Thunderbolt Iron.

His funeral showed me that my father meant many things to many people, and we were all grieving for different versions of him, when he felt most ours. For my mother, it was their early years together when they were semi self-sufficient, grew their own vegetables and had goats in the front garden and chickens in the back. For his manager Rob, it was sitting side by side, helping him keep the words flowing and making him the odd “glug” – a coffee with a tot of brandy. Or, on harder days, a brandy with a tot of coffee. For me, the dad I grieved most for, and still do, is the one I remember as a kid.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Rhianna Pratchett with her father, Sir Terry Pratchett. Photograph: Rob Wilkins

We didn’t have much money, but I hardly noticed when there were woods and fields to run around in, trees to climb and animals to play with. Dad and I often walked around the countryside while he taught me which wild plants were edible and showed me hidden caves and pools in the middle of the forest. He used to whistle loudly. I could never get the hang of it, so instead he taught me the words to The Rhubarb Tart Song and Whose Pigs Are These?. We would sing them loudly, joyfully, the wildlife fleeing before us.

Dad was someone who committed to the narrative of a situation rather more than the practicality. So he would wrap me up and take me out of bed in the middle of the night to show me the glow-worms in the hedge or Halley’s Comet blazing across a star-filled sky. For him, his daughter seeing these marvels of nature was much more important than sleeping, which I could do any time. He didn’t teach me magic, he showed me it.

I owe both my father and my mother a huge debt of thanks for an idyllic childhood, one that’s helped me become the person I am today. One where I could be free to run around in nature, climb trees (and fall out of them) and to come to understand the wonders of the world – and of course to be able to milk goats in an emergency. I like to think that wherever Dad is now, there is a hat on his head, a stick in his hand and a whistle on his lips. There’s probably a cat about somewhere too. There should always be a cat.