My dad is in his 87th year. Not great on his feet anymore, but comfortably enough settled into aged care.

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He is, and always has been, the wisest person I know.

I was thinking about Mother's Day this week and I picked up the phone.

I feel like I know how much he still misses my mum, 13 years on. I still feel an almost childlike longing to be cuddled by her. To hear her joyous cackle. To have her tell me how great she thinks I am.

But I wondered this week if my dad still misses his mum, the stoic Irishwoman who nurtured him on a Queensland farm.

Does the passing of almost half a century since she died conquer those feelings?

So I called him after his dinner and just asked.

"Oh yes," he said, without hesitating. "I still miss my mum. I still love her."

But it's different, he explained. He doesn't think of her every day and memories are now hazy and distant.

Displaced too by other losses, including the great one.

"That's a different love and loss I had with your mum," he told me. More intense.

"I still miss her every day, but........

© Canberra Times