I dream about this person every night. Every single night. I think about them when I’m awake, too. Not constantly, but definitely a few times a day. Something will be said that makes me think of them, how much I need them, and how I wish I could hold them, and I have to physically or mentally withdraw until I’m okay again.

This has been going on for almost 10 years. Not that they died 10 years ago. They weren’t even born 10 years ago. That’s the point: they weren’t born at all.

I thought I knew grief. My mum died - cancer - when I was 22 and the effect of that was profound. My grief had nowhere to go — I didn’t know anyone my age who’d lost a parent so I never ever spoke about it properly - to anyone. Instead I purged that whirl of suppressed energised pain into ambition. Life is short! I want to do everything! (That, of course, didn’t work and I started therapy when I was 39. A year before the age Mum was when she died. Analyse that.)

And then Dad died. When he was 64 and I was 42. His death, cancer again, shook my life. Not just the loss of this powerhouse personality - but because, as an adult, I could now understand grief and had people around me who would ‘allow’ it. To that end, I think I grieved both my parents then.