31 years ago a man left his home to pick up his daughters from the train station. A 20 minute round trip at worst. He left dinner warming in the oven. He left his pup pal snoozing by his chair. He left the front door unlocked {it was suburbia in the mid-1980s}.

He never made it to the train station though, he was critically injured in a car accident on the way. He was my Daddy. And he was gone. He was 47.

He was my age.

Grief changes over time. It ebbs and flows like a tide. I’ve spoken of this recently when we lost Bella. It has been the same for the past 31 years in relation to my Daddy. This year though, it has taken on an extra angle.

He was my age. Somehow that fact has made it more real again. It’s as if the fuzzy edges that time imbues are sharpened once more. Everything is in technicolour.

I can feel the warmth of the house when I walked in. I can see his puppy sitting not in front of his armchair, but on it. I can hear him whimpering. The delicious scent of dinner hangs in the air. I call for him, but he doesn’t answer. Somehow in my heart and deep in the pit of my stomach I know that the worst has come to play.

The cab driver who eventually drove my little sister and I home from the station said she would avoid one of the roads she’d normally take as there had been a car accident. Walking into that home, empty of my Daddy, those words rang in my ears.

How many times this year have I said goodbye to Beary {or Bella and Beary} and left home to pick Love Bug up from a play date, school, grandma’s?

I miss him every day. I am sad for the many things in our lives he has missed. I see pieces of him in Love Bug. Yet, I feel a comfort in knowing he and Bella {and Rufus and all of our other pup pals who have gone before us} are together.

I can’t stop thinking: he was my age. He was only my age.