These ten years have been both brutal and blissful.A confounding kaleidoscope of feelings tethered to the vicissitudes of life without you.

I find myself clinging desperately to threads of memory, battling to recall the precise timbre of your voice, the nuances of your expressions and mannerisms, dreading the fog that inevitably dulls its vibrancy with each passing year. “Is this where one truly dies?” I have asked myself in restless dreams, “In the shrinking shrine room of a loved one’s mind?”

Fires burnt to embers, to ash, then understanding. As the walls of my suffering collapse, I come to see you anew, free of a father’s mould.

On a hastening horizon, we are that same child, with a soul carved deep, ever learning to swim against the tides of torment, towards islands of beauty. Resting upon shores but knowing, even when resigned to weary descent, towards the silence of the dark deep, It’s never over!

We last spoke of marriage. Today I am just weeks away from mine and I feel heavy at the thought of your absence. At you never having met the incredible woman I now share my life with. At her never experiencing the roots of my humour, At the thought of you not bearing witness to the courage and tenacity with which your wife and daughter have journeyed thus far. At the thought of us not celebrating together. For it seems we did so little of that.

As the memories lose their lustre, I think of how I can transcend mourning and better celebrate you. The foundation of my bones. For beneath a label and the ravages of sorrow, We are that same child you and I. With wisdom and values that are lost and gained through the ages. Inextricable, we swim together, across that hastening horizon.