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ND so real life goes on. But my dad is with me always. I have some of his old spanners and screwdrivers from the workshop, and I know that my fingers are touching his as I tighten a bolt or undo a crooked screw.

I don’t literally hear his voice, but I know what he would say, and I know how pleased he would be to see me working with his tools. His presence is very intensely with me then. I consciously open up to that inner reality and I love him more deeply than I had ever imagined possible.

I cannot change the fact that he is gone, and sadness often wells up inside me, but I know that this love for him and his presence in my life now is more than nostalgia, it is an ongoing, lived experience of joy.

The other night I woke gently in the cool, silent darkness of a moonless night. As I lay there I remembered how it had been, and felt, too, the emptiness of how it could never be again.

“Please think of me sometimes when I’m gone,” he whispered to me in the last hours of his weakening, painracked days.

Dad, you are with me every day, and so too, in the enchanted night when I am woken from sleep to my memories of love and wonder. LS www.hamiltonwende.com