The most freeing memories I have are from when I was a child, untouched by death. I was immortal back them, and so were the ones I loved. If the topic of death did come up, I’d brush it off as something that would never affect me. How could it? I was at the start of my days. The end didn’t exist back then.

The day that death brushed me was the day when my anxiety started. I was in primary school, and during one of the assemblies, we were given a talk on how ‘cigarettes can kill.’ I was probably nine at the time, so I obviously didn’t smoke, but I knew people who did – my mum and dad. So began my reckoning. If cigarettes can kill, does that mean they are going to die? I couldn’t fathom the idea of life without them. The mere thought had my stomach clenching and my airways closing off. Death, I realised, was something out of my control. So I started concentrating on things that I could control. If I do this, they won’t die. If I’m a good little girl who behaves herself, the universe will reward me, and my prize will be my parents sticking around for as long as I do.

My dad was a wonderful man. He passed away when I was thirteen, so I only knew him through the eyes of a child, but I remember loving him with a fierceness that had me seeking comfort in his arms while being a little girl swearing to protect him. He took me and my siblings on many holidays across the UK, worked incredibly hard to support us, and had a conscience that I now realise was similar to my own. When I think about him, I think about the time when he argued with my grandma and how he was riddled with guilt for a long time after. I remember how he asked me to go downstairs to tell her that I loved her because he struggled to say the words himself but still wanted her to hear them. I think about how the anger would take control of him, but the remorse would always follow. I think about lying across his stomach on the living room sofa while we watched a movie, and how he’d carry me to bed when I inevitably fell asleep during it. My brother now has two daughters of his own, and I sometimes watch as he hugs them, holding them tight to his chest, thinking how lucky they are to have a dad who loves them so much. Then I remember that I had that once, too, and it’s always a poignant moment.

I remember when my dad first started to get sick. He was taken to hospital, but being thirteen, I didn’t fully understand the depth of it. I wasn’t allowed to know how bad it really was, and I probably wouldn’t have been able to comprehend it anyway. So I continued my days like nothing had changed. I went to school, saw my friends, watched TV, ate food while my mum lost her appetite. To me, this was all temporary, a hitch in a life that would continue to be. My dad would come home, and all would be normal. Every day that he didn’t come home was a day that he was still alive and getting taken care of. When I was told that he was dying and that he only had a few weeks left to live, the panic that gripped me was thwarted by the naïve hope that can get a child through almost anything. I prayed and prayed, I wished and wished. I didn’t know where my prayers were going, if I was wishing on a star, a candle, or an eyelash, but I sent them with a secret message that if my dad survived this, I would be forever good.

At the time that my dad was in hospital, our dog, Ben, got put down. I remember my mum telling me the news and how shattered I felt after hearing it. I locked myself into the bathroom and wailed – quietly – as I experienced grief for the very first time. I think part of what I grieved for was the belief that death would never hit me. I still clung to that belief, even with everything going on around me. Ben’s death blind-sighted me. It was a punch that came from behind, shattering the allusion I held so dearly to my chest. I thought I could protect things through merely loving them. Now I knew that I couldn’t, and for the first time, I feared that my dad might actually be taken from me.

I was in school when it happened. To this day, I remember it clearly. The teacher came into my class like one of those scenes from a movie, looking solemn, and said my uncle was here to take me and my brother home. No one said a word to us besides that. It’s strange. I remember feeling confused as if time was moving, but it wasn’t linear. I’d been told to expect the news, but it was always a distant thing, something that would never happen. Even when I saw the kitchen crowded with family members. Even when I registered their puffy eyes and the down-turning of their lips. Even when my mum sobbed and said she couldn’t do it, someone else would have to tell us. I never believed that he was gone.

My uncle was the one to tell me. He held me by the shoulders and, through a sob, said those very words, He’s gone. And then he pulled me into a hug while the news did its cruel work of crashing in on me.

I have always been a mourner. I form bonds and attachments to many things, and I always cry when they are cut from me. I am sentimental. I know this. But mourning, to me, is a way of honouring something that means something to you. My dad was a treasure to me, a most beloved treasure, and I mourned for him for a long time. Grief is a terrifying place to find yourself, and if you’re experiencing it for the first time, the shock makes it so much worse. Here I find myself, a thirteen-year-old girl without a dad to hold her, facing the reality that death shows no mercy. There is a hole in my life that can’t be filled, a craving that can’t be satiated. I want to speak to my dad. Why can’t I? I need to see him. Where is he? I’m lost, searching for someone who no longer exists.

But death has a remarkable way of changing a person. The determining factor is how you deal with it. At a young age, I realised the true depth of the term ‘actions have consequences.’ I replayed every horrible thing I said to my dad, every misbehaviour, every selfish act. I tortured myself with this, experiencing remorse on an acute level. But as time went by, I realised that although I couldn’t fix things with him, I could prevent it from happening again with other people. Losing my dad is the reason why I try my utmost to be kind. He’s the reason I feel so remorseful after the smallest of arguments and why I’m never ashamed to be the first to apologise. He’s the reason I’m so easy at forgiving and why I never want to be a person’s regret. He’s the reason I feel gratitude for the air in my lungs and why I’d risk any amount of money for happiness and a well-paid job for one I enjoy. All of my best traits come from loving my dad.

I was too young to have truly known him, but I feel as if he knows me. I carry him with me always. It’s nearly fifteen years on, and not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about him. It doesn’t even require effort. The memory of him comes to me as easy as breathing. I paid a dear price for loving him because thirteen years was too young to lose him. Thirteen years wasn’t enough. But if he ever sat with the knowledge that the end was coming and feared being forgotten, I am proof today that when somebody loves you, they will never forget.