It has been twelve years since Davyd Whaley died.

The number twelve. Twelve marks the completed cycle. Twelve months, twelve hours on the clock face, twelve signs moving through the full zodiac year — it’s the number at which the circle closes. Not thirteen, which is already the next thing, but twelve: the last count before the wheel starts again.

A twelve-year-old stands on a threshold — not yet adolescent, no longer simply a child. If my grief is now that age, it’s exactly the moment when it stops being what it was and doesn’t yet know what it’s becoming.