For something so earth-shattering, it’s surprising how normal, how  ordered it is, to lose a parent.  Losing a child is an obscenity – an offence against nature. But to lose a parent is different. It happens as inevitably as the turning of the year.

It’s August nights growing chilly, it’s rose-petals falling, it’s leaves turning gold in September, it’s the gentle frost on berries in the lane where – you remember – you walked with your parents and collected conkers.

It’s Autumnal, somehow, even if it happens in the Spring – and that in itself is poignant because Autumn was the time when the lights were on in the window as you walked home in the early dusk, and you knew when you reached the lights there would be safety.

The thing with bereavement is, you never actually get over it, although of course you are not always sad. You live around it, like the grit in an oyster, until somehow it becomes a smooth thing which doesn’t cut you, and the memories shine. But it never goes away. You never get used to loved ones being gone. Your relationship with someone as crucial as a parent continues, in a way. It just becomes longer since you last spoke.

And although mostly you are too busy to think about it, and you know it can’t happen, secretly you long for just one more word, because at some point, that person you loved – who possibly always had far too much to say on most subjects – stopped being able to answer you, and although you are aware that before they went, you had a last conversation, you can’t remember what it was about.

However old you are when this happens, when the people who knew you before you knew yourself are gone, taking with them your past, this is when you begin to grow up, because finally, the buck stops with you.

Your source of safety and unconditional love must finally be yourself.

All your life there has been someone who has, metaphorically, been at the school gate to admire your achievement: the painting of the swan, the exam you passed, the job you got, the baby you had.

Now there is nobody who fully understands how it was to see that baby as a bride. It must all come from, and live within, yourself.

But there is a new dignity there, too, because there comes a time when you realise that years have passed and there are loves you have known, and triumphs and failures you have lived through, which your parents never knew of. They happened to you alone, the you who is – outwardly – no-one’s son or daughter any more.

There is something both humbling and magnificent in seeing your children reach ages at which you remember your parents, of seeing your own face come to resemble theirs. You realise then, that you are part of an infinite chain of people who have held and loved each other, stretching back into the mists of time.

And as you near, or pass, the age they were when you last saw them, there is a growing understanding of who they were, and why they were like that, and with that comes a new tenderness for them, which is quite beautiful.

And yes: there is an instinct which tells you that Autumn is not the end.

It’s just a sleep, just for a while.

Life really does go on: the daffodils will open in Spring, and you will paddle in the sea in Summer, and if they never knew the lanes you walk, or the dog you walk with, or the sunrises you see, well, nevertheless you love those things and they are real. You will roll up your sleeves and get on with your life and you will enjoy each blessing you have, and fight all the necessary fights, and there will be sleep, and laughter, and food, and peace in the evening.

Eventually, it’s just occasionally that you ache with a sudden and desperate need to talk with them, just once more; to walk through that door again and find them there just as they were, welcoming you as if the time apart has only been a journey – to lay down the burden just for a moment or two, and be somebody’s child again, or simply tell them that you understand, now…and it passes, and you walk on again, and life is good.

But above all, with time, when that grit in the oyster has finally become a pearl, you realise that the only thing that ever mattered was the love.

And love never dies.

Thanks for everything, you two – wherever you are.