My dad died 22 years ago today.

He was just 62, the age that I am now, and died suddenly from a stroke.

Grief is a very personal affair and people deal with it in so many ways.

Although my mum, three sisters, brother and I were part of the same family unit we each experienced and expressed our grief very differently.

Naturally, on days like this you re-live the moments, hours and days before the end of a life that was so fundamentally important to your own.

This is hard as it evokes memories of the raw grief you felt and the inevitable ‘what if?’ questions you’ve asked yourself so many times.

I don’t think I have ever really worked through the grief of losing my dad (and my mum who died just five months after him).

I don’t know that I ever will.

But now, on this date of 7 September, I am able to remember his life more than his death.