“Many of you will recall the opening scene of the hit movie Love Actually, when Hugh Grant describes how he imagines the arrivals gate at London’s Heathrow Airport whenever he feels miserable. He only has to picture all those hugs and tears to be reminded that love is everywhere.

Like Hugh, I’m all for love. Its importance has been proven time and again throughout my life. On our first wedding anniversary I gave Trevor a book and scribbled my favourite quote from War and Peace inside— something about love being the only reality in the world, and ‘all else is folly’. Years later when I was studying for my masters in resilience psychology, we were asked to take psychological tests to identify our personal strengths. The results suggested my number-one strength is the ability to love and be loved.

So, yes, I get the importance and abundance of love. I do indeed feel it in my fingers and toes. But the years have also taught me another painful truth: wherever there is love, there is loss and grief. Sure, the airport arrivals hall is a joyous place filled with love and affection. But if you wander down the corridor, maybe up an escalator or two, you’ll find a very different story: the tears and misery of the departure gates. Separation and loss are all around us; the grief they spawn affects us all. Yet we live in largely grief-illiterate societies where people fail to recognise any loss besides that related to death.”