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I was with my dad 20 years ago as he was dying. I was there at the moment of his death, and I kept wondering the whole while what it must feel like from his point of view to still be there thinking, hearing all that was going on as people came and went, and life continued all around him.

Dad passed away in 2000, but he visits me all the time. He comes to me in different ways. So I have that connection with him, and that comforts me, to know that in time I can come back and still have that with my kids. It's not unfamiliar to me, that connection with the afterlife. I know it's real; I experience it all the time.

I still relate to my father very much. I mean, I talk to him in a certain way, as we do talk to the dead.

My father was out of my life when I was pretty young - when I was 7 years old, he was gone. I didn't see him for the rest of my childhood.

The grief of losing my father has come in waves over the years, as it does with most people. His love and devotion as a father provided my closest, most intimate relationship. Dad, and our time together, is in my bones. While reflecting on him, the memories themselves seem to boil down into certain 'essences of Dad.'

I really believe in, 'Move on, live and let live, forgive and forget.'

When my father passed away and then when later on I gave birth, those are sort of ground-breaking experiences that put everything else into perspective.

I grew up not seeing my father, and it is a hole in my heart that will never heal.

I was very close to my mother, and her death, which left a gaping hole in my life, has been very difficult for me and my father in a lot of ways.

In my father's later years he asked several times that I remember him the way I knew him. He said that after his death, people would talk. They would say 'things' about him and he wouldn't be there to defend himself.