SOMETIMES, I open my mouth and my mother jumps out. Sometimes, I flop down on the sofa, balance a large cup of boiling tea on one knee and flick open the newspaper – and that's straight out of my father's gene pool.
I'm leafing through the news, but my eyes stray to the family notices and I hear myself asking his question: "Do you know who's died?"
Like a dose of the measles, the habit has spread to my other half.
Years ago, we'd roll our eyes as our father scanned the list. Now, I catch myself reading obits and thinking that 88 is 'too young'.
Oh yes, and sometimes, despite all the warnings about balancing hot tea on a precarious knee as you read your Irish News, I end up like my father, toppling the mug and dancing that famous jig, 'The Scalded Crotch'.
And all this is a way of saying that I took the early train to Dublin this week for the funeral of the mother of one of my oldest friends.
"OMG, don't worry about coming, we're meeting soon, date set," she texted.
But I couldn't not go.
It's 30 years since I first took the train as a student from Central Station to Dublin. My father in his old brown raincoat waved me off. It was an old shabby coat, but it smelled of him.
My mother spent years trying at every opportunity to smuggle it into the bin, only to refuse to be parted with it after he died suddenly.
There's a certain camaraderie about an early morning train station – workers whistling, commuters chatting to ticket sellers like old friends, the man going in to clean the toilets singing a Christmas tune even though it's January and I'd swing for Frosty the Snowman.
You can buy a large Americano and a croissant before you board – 'twas far from that we were reared.
At Connolly, you can take the Dart or the Luas. It's not like in the old days when, one particular winter, the buses just ground to a halt; the capital city's "snow plough" meant two men on the back of a lorry shovelling sand and milk was strictly rationed.
I met my best college friend on one of my first days in Dublin. Having chosen to go to a university where I knew absolutely nobody - "Was UCD not good enough?" our school principal asked – I was Nuala No Mates.
Then along sauntered this elegant young woman, across the courtyard of TCD 1979, and I thought that anyone who could tackle cobblestones in six-inch stilettos was worth knowing.
She was a wonder – she could down vodka and remain stone cold sober, she could eat giant cream meringues and never lose her waistline and she had men falling at her feet, but never noticed.
We laughed – that time we travelled to the south of France to pick strawberries and the farmers shook their heads and said the fruit would not be ripe for another month... that was a funny, if expensive, laugh.
Years later, she'd pick me up from the train station in her little green French Citroen and I'd put my feet up on her dashboard and we'd sing along to "I've been to paradise but I've never been to me." After a night out we'd end up at the late-night kebab shop or the chip shop, just like old times.
Her mum and dad's home was open house – I've eaten, drunk and slept there. We cooked up all the food for my 21st party in her mum's kitchen – I borrowed her sister's white jumpsuit for a night out.
So how could I not go to the funeral?
All that warmth and generosity, the laughter and the fun was brought to life as my friend told the congregation about her mum turning cartwheels in the garden with her grandchildren and how she believed the best way to deal with a crying baby was to leave the pram at the bottom of the garden, out of ear shot.
Yes, there are too many funerals.
But there is laughter, alongside the tears – life is beautiful.
