I watched sadly as my father’s coffin was lowered into the ground. I glanced to my sister, Jade, and put my arm around her trembling shoulders as tears spilled down her cheeks, her mascara running as well. I sighed as I caught a brief look at my mother who stood on the other side of the grave.

Bye Dad, I thought brokenly as the coffin disappeared from view and I sighed again, more heavily this time. When the coffin reached the bottom of the grave, the small group of my family disbanded before my mum and little brother, Brendan came over and my mother embraced my sister and me, still weeping pathetically.

“You alright mum?” Jade asked as we pulled away.

Mum sniffed. “I think so . . . I’m just so-” She broke off and started crying again and I put an arm around her, rubbing her back soothingly as she wept into my shoulder.

“It’ll be alright Mum . . .” I whispered.

“Thank you Tyrone.” She sniffed, pulling away and smiling tearfully up at me. “You three are still here and I should be thankful for that.”

Jade and I smiled. “It’ll be fine Mum, as soon as you’ve got Uncle Blake to help you out everything’ll be fine.” We said in unison, Brendan laughing. Sometimes it was really fun to have a twin sister as well as a little brother, except of course when the little brother was driving you up the wall.

Mum smiled and hugged us again. “Hmm, in two days we’ll be on the other side of the world, and we can start all over again.” She whispered.

“Dad still won’t be around . . .” I said slowly. Mum pulled away, she cupped my face and looked into my bright blue eyes which she had so many times were like my father’s.

“Tyrone, I know he will never come back but I am not going to let this ruin everything else. Everything is going to be fine, even without Aidan.” She told me but I pulled away and stalked back to the church where the cemetery was situated. As I walked I pulled off the black neck tie that had belonged to my father and threw it to the ground as tears threatened to spill down my cheeks. Ironically, as I began to cry it began to rain but this didn’t surprise me at all, it was Ireland after all.