Tomorrow is 24 years ago to the day that I last saw my Dad. He died very suddenly and unexpectedly when I was just past my 15th birthday. My last memory of him is him telling me he loved me with an urgency I found a bit embarrassing. Being 15 and conscious of not being uncool in front of his hospital room mates I wriggled away from him and wondered if Mum would let me watch Dallas that night. Still, the urgency bothered me more than I cared to admit. In my little world Dads didn't do 'urgent' they did fixing and wiping away tears when everyone else was too busy to care. But as he was in for a routine test or 2 I busily laughed off his affection and told him to stop being daft. He just smiled, and let go his embrace. I immediately wished he'd hug me again. It wasn't to be as someone bustled in with a cup of tea that he didn't want, and the last thing I saw of him was his waving hand. I almost went back - but didn't.

My school was next to the hospital, so I dashed round after school and on an impulse bought him a very expensive pen for his birthday which was a few days later. I got told off for this, but I felt it was, well, kind of urgent. When Mum arrived to see him I was sent on an important errand to get squash. I remember thinking that he hated squash but somehow it wasn't a time to debate his imbibing preferences. I know it took me a while to get the lift, and I also know that I wasn't best pleased to have a vicar in full regalia strike up a conversation with me as I went about my important teenage business. The vicar followed me into the shop, and seemed unduly nosey to me....he took an unwelcome interest in why I was there and who I was seeing. So I was a bit offish with him, hoping he'd go and bother someone esle, and was utterly mortified when he followed me back into the lift and asked if he could visit my Dad.

OK so apart from sending my brother and I to Sunday school my father's views on religion were pretty straight - 'it's up to you but I had it rammed down my throat and it doesn't interest me'. He wasn't rude about vicars, he wasn't rude about anyone for that matter, but I wasn't sure that being sent to get squash and returning with a highly embellished vicar with some kind of goblet thing would be what Dad would want.

Anyway, with persistent and irritating vicar in tow I returned to Dad's ward. I remember looking at Mum and wondering if they'd been discussing my poor perfomance in school that term. I don't know what passed between them that terrible day, it was not for me to ever ask, but I'm pretty certain it wasn't my failings in pregnant rat dissection. What must they have said to each other? What do you say when you feel something terrible might be about to happen, and when the one you love is so close they can feel it too? But through the eyes of a 15 yr old my parents were only there to discuss the most important topic - me. That's how it goes.

Then something quite shocking happened. I'd told the vicar 'Dad won't like this but come if you like' and as he started to apologise for turning up unannounced my Dad just waved him to stop. I held my breath, Mum looked down. Dad then simply said ' You lot and I have never really got on have we? But I've always tried to be a good man'

I thought this wasn't the half of it, and interrupted that he was a brilliant man and noone in a dress could ever say otherwise. This time I was waved to stop. The vicar shook his hand, and even I with a head full of Simon Le Bon felt something pass between them. And it was bigger than a prayer or a dab of holy water.

2 hours later Dad died. Alone, and with no warning. Only I think he had some warning, and I think the poignancy of the moment with the annoying vicar was something quite special. Birthday present aside, one he never used I might add but he was very pleased with, I like to think that me taking the vicar to him (albeit in a surly teenage way) was quite what he wanted, but would never have asked for. And that's why it happened.

So 24 years on I reflect on the father i knew only briefly, and I list the countless things he has missed. Yes the big things like husbands (sorry Dad) and my sons. But also the little things like us playing the piano together and arguing about whose fingers were fastest. I had taken my grade 8 piano exam 2 days previously, and as I stepped out of the examination hall I'd noticed he was a bit pale. But as tradition had it, he always bought me a new LP after every piano grade. This year it was Synchronicity by the Police. He couldn't get his head round the Police, thought Sting was an imbecile. And what about all the silly pranks he would play on me as I tried hopelessly to grow into a young woman and he would remind me playfully that actually I still loved being a little girl....

And now as i look ahead to being near the age I was when my mother lost him, I wonder what he'd say to me. I can imagine quite a bit of it, some of it is probably unmentionable. But most of all I like to think that I am still very much his daughter, and that I did indeed grow into the woman he hoped I would. Just a small hope.