Andrew Miller: A child’s precious friends soften the blow when they take flight

Twelve years ago, I lost a close friend — he had a boy the same age as mine.

Those lads are now 23, and last week they were headed to the airport, off to meet another school friend in Melbourne.

When the alarm went off at 3.50am I was already awake, thinking of the days when Hilton had still been around to share his laugh.

I sat on the edge of the bed staring at the blank floor, waiting for my brain to load.

If I had laid back down, another nine minutes would have vanished — time runs away.

My father resented bedtime — he thought it just a waste of seven hours. In the military, 0400hrs is a time for doing things.

When you have seen a lot of death, you never forget that the clock is running.

My clothes were laid out so I could slip away with minimal disruption — only the cat was watching.

“I have no curiosity about your plans — I couldn’t care less” she said, while licking her paws.

I set out in the still-dark for the short drive to my son’s place — just long enough to catch a radio news bulletin.

The stories were all of war, and Trump’s predictably wild line-up of Cabinet selections.

No one else was on the road, but the red arrow still made me wait for oncoming ghosts and phantoms making their way home before dawn.

I texted my arrival, despite knowing my son’s phone has never had notifications enabled.

His generation is wise — contactable only when they want to be — but he tumbled out the front door right on time.

It’s impossible to look at your adult offspring without seeing the kids inside.

All his years flashed in front of me, in the way he stumbled towards the car and threw his bag on the back seat, shirt hanging out, pillow-hair smooshed on one side — even in the tiniest shrug he gave when I asked, “you got everything?”

There he was — three, thirteen and twenty-three all in one. What parent can tell these versions apart, when we love them all so much it hurts?

I used to joke that “it’s great that he lives so close to school, because it only takes a minute for his mum to drive him there and back”.

Don’t worry — he walked most days.

Even in the shroud of loss, a new day always brings some hope. We wanted these boys to be better versions of us, and we got lucky.

But the adolescent years are too hard on the body and mind — letting him sleep was simply kindness.

There’s nothing wrong with being kind to your children — they will learn quick enough, without your help, that the world is brutal.

Home should be a refuge, not a boot camp, and schools should be rated for mental health, ahead of academics.

He made forever-friends in primary school.

That’s the most important thing we get from school really, the landmark people you may not see for years, before seamlessly taking up where you left off.

Those few whose souls you really know.

The rest of it — the Japanese feudal system; cosine and tangent; compare and contrast; cricket and recorder, was mostly noise.

The city was waking, stretching and yawning as we drove together past choirs of kerbside wheelie bins, wiggly streetsweepers and over-enthusiastic sprinklers.

The sun arrived right on schedule, unforgiving as it poked at curtains facing east.

“One up, all up,” the accelerating trucks roared.

Even in the shroud of loss, a new day always brings some hope. We wanted these boys to be better versions of us, and we got lucky.

I hugged him tightly, then he left for his reunion with the boys, now men.

Men with bills to pay, relationships to navigate, and a future world to worry about.

Men who will always have each other — even in death.

I never take these latter days — the ones some others never got — for granted.

Jump at every chance you get to drop your kid somewhere.