But my lazy lack of faith, my in-vogue atheism, has taken away the safety net hanging beneath our children's lives.

I get up and pace the room, as if I can leave my guilt behind me. But it tracks me as I walk, an ugly shadow made by myself.

Usually time alters and affects everything, but when someone you love dies time cannot change that, no amount of time will ever change that, so time stops having any meaning.

But my lazy lack of faith, my in-vogue atheism, has taken away the safety net hanging beneath our children's lives.

It's not the fledgling birds that are thrown out of the nest by their parents and made to fly; it's the parents who are made to get the hell out of cozy family nest by their teenage offspring. It's we who are made to be independent of them, crash-landing if we don't manage it.

Surely a good therapist should produce a Dorian Gray-style portrait from under the couch so the patient can see the person they really are.

But grief is the ultimate unrequited love. However hard and long we love someone who has died, they can never love us back. At least that is how it feels.