October 14. Three years since I held your hand.

I’m wearing your beige sweater. It was your favourite, or at least the one you wore most often. You did love your beige, didn’t you? The label says it’s cashmere and made in Italy, but it’s still itchy. It also still smells like you. It does. It really does.

You were in my dreams last night. You announced that you were taking a road trip, on your own, to Nova Scotia. Why Nova Scotia? Because, you said, “I can’t drive to Scotland.”

I was worried about you, and I thought about pushing back and being the bossy daughter Mum always said I was. But I didn’t. I let you go. I hugged you tightly, said goodbye, and watched you drive away in your British racing green Jaguar XJ6. You bought it when I was 18 or 19, and I thought it was the most beautiful car I’d ever seen. You let me take it out one night with a strict curfew. You were standing at the living room window when I pulled into the driveway. I made it home just in time.

How I wish you were still standing in that window.

I miss you.

So much has happened since you died. You always said life goes on. It does, Dad. Sometimes all at once. I wish you were here to meet all the new little people who have arrived. They’ll know you anyway. I’ll make sure of it.

The older I get, the more questions I have. And the more I understand you. It’s like I’m finding parts of you I couldn’t see before, because I hadn’t lived enough yet. I want to talk to you about aging. About being a grandparent. I want to know what it felt like for you to watch me become a mother, the same way I’m watching Iain and Jamieson become fathers. To their daughters.

It isn’t true that we miss someone less as time passes. That isn’t true at all. I miss you more, more because I’ve been without you longer.

So today I’m wearing your sweater and letting it itch, and drinking tea from my big red cardinal mug with the little poem about visitors. Later I’ll pour a wee dram of Oban and toast to you, and the life that goes on.

I love you.

I am still, and always will be, your daughter.