I still miss my father. Hardly a day goes by where I don’t think of him, wish he was still here, wish I could share a memory or a moment. Death is so final for all of us left behind, and while faith helps sustain, it doesn’t salve our scars of pain. He’s gone 25 years, and I’m soon getting to the point where he will have been gone longer from my life than he was here.

Mum is gone as well, but the ache of loss isn’t the same in many ways. I think it’s because she was lingering for so long, death came as a happy release in many ways. Besides, I know she’s with my father, and they are happy.

Dad was also mostly deaf. He lost all his hearing in his right ear and half in his left when he contracted scarlet fever as a child. You never hear of scarlet fever nowadays, few get it. It’s one of those diseases that probably festered in poverty and cramped conditions, and our knowledge of medicine and antibiotics eradicated it.

Having three sons and a daughter, it was likely a blessing for Dad that he was deaf. He probably missed us shouting, making a din, playing music, and all the coming and goings of a small house full of teen angst. It was also a blessing for us. If you wanted to tell him something bad, all you had to was talk into his bad ear, and he wouldn’t hear you, and you got away with whatever adolescent misdemeanour you were charged with. Justice is blind. In our family’s case, justice was deaf, so you had the leniency of the court. And if it was acceptable or good news, you talked into his good ear, and he always approved.

He also worked nights for a long time. And being mostly deaf was another blessing in disguise, for he could sleep undisturbed during the days.

For us of the generations before smart televisions and remote controls, watching TV was a physical sport. You had to make sure the antenna on top of the television was placed just right and you had to get up and out of your seat every time you wanted to change a channel — we had two at first, then five when cable television came to our street — or adjust the volume. With Dad being deaf, the volume was always at the highest setting. Every time, to this day, when I raise the telly volume, I think of Dad.

When those new three channels came, we went from RTE 1 and 2 to the whole exciting world of BBC 1, BBC 2 and ITV. Now, when I scroll through hundreds of television channels — and it’s hard to find anything worth watching — I think of Dad.

It seems now that I only see family members at funerals or the occasional wedding. It’s a time to catch up with cousins I haven’t seen in decades and to reminisce about times growing up, shared holidays. Next time I see some of my Clontarf cousins, I must ask about my Uncle Colm’s Renault 4. It was a car that seemed voluminous back then.

We would take a house by the sea for a month. Getting there was a logistical operation befitting of General Eisenhower on D-Day. We stormed the beach at Rush in a Renault 4, and I have memories of Dad and Colm loading it up in Fairview with all our belongings and — I’m sure this isn’t a false childhood memory — with the washing machine.

Looking back, I guess the fact that there were four children, Mum needed the washing machine. Looking after us and Dad — and some of the cousins who also came along for a few days here and there — I guess she never really had a holiday with a true break. What’s more, the telly was always turned up high. How I miss them both.