I hope you made that phone call. If you did, I hope you and he spent hours talking on the phone about precisely nothing. I miss my dad and have had a lot of moments in the last 16 years where I’ve wanted to pick up the phone to tell him about shit that’s happening in my life or about new things his youngest grandchild is doing and I can’t.

Mine died 16 years ago. The first Christmas after he passed was hell. Dad not being around for Christmas wasn’t odd - he was in the merchant navy so it wasn’t unusual for him to be away for Christmas. But knowing that he wasn’t coming back was hell.

I want to tell you it gets better, and I can tell you that it does, but it takes a lot longer than it feels like it should.