Life at the holiday park was going reasonably well. I had settled into the job, had a decent place to live and, from the outside at least, things probably looked as though they had finally started coming together for me. My relationship with Zara, however, was a different story.

There had been too much inconsistency for too long. The coming and going, the uncertainty and the stress that came with it had eventually worn me down. I had reached the point where I didn't want to keep living like that anymore. Whatever feelings were still there between us weren't enough to make the relationship work, and eventually I decided it was time to let her go.

We parted on good terms. There wasn't some huge explosive ending or dramatic fallout between us. We accepted that the relationship had run its course and went our separate ways. Jake remained a connection between us, and we shared custody of him in our own way. He lived with me but would occasionally spend time with Zara as well. Jake had become such an important part of my life that making sure he was looked after mattered more than whatever had happened between the two of us.

I was now single and in my early twenties, with a house, a job and enough freedom to do whatever I wanted outside of work. As far as I was concerned, I was young, single and able to mingle. The partying continued.

What had started as something mainly reserved for weekends gradually began creeping into the rest of the week. P was becoming a more regular part of my life, although I certainly wasn't looking at myself as someone developing a serious drug problem. At that stage, I could still point to everything I had around me as evidence that I was doing alright. I had a job, I had somewhere to live, I was earning money and I was turning up for work. In my mind, those things separated me from whatever picture I had of an addict.

The problem was that P came with a price. What goes up eventually has to come down. After staying awake and partying for an entire weekend, my body wanted sleep. Not a normal night's sleep, either. The crash could wipe me out, and I had a job that I relied on. I couldn't disappear into bed for days every time a weekend ended. There were guests to deal with, bookings to manage, maintenance to take care of and responsibilities that weren't going to wait for me to recover.

The answer I found was also the thing making the problem worse. Instead of allowing myself to come down, I started using P on more than just the weekends. At the time, it could be justified as a way of keeping myself functioning. If I was exhausted and had to work, using again could push the crash further away. It wasn't yet about abandoning my responsibilities. In a strange way, I was using it because I thought it was helping me meet them.

That was one of the dangerous things about P. The line didn't suddenly move overnight. There wasn't one morning when I woke up and announced to myself that I was going to become addicted to m@thamphetamine. The boundaries shifted gradually. A dr#g that had belonged to Friday and Saturday nights began finding its way into weekdays.

For the time being, I kept moving forward.

Then, in 2002, I received a phone call that brought everything else to a halt. My grandma had died in Tauranga.

I was devastated.

Grandma and I had shared a special bond throughout my life. She had been one of those people who had always mattered to me, and losing her carried a weight that was difficult to put into words. There are some people you grow up assuming will always be somewhere in the background of your life, even though you know that can't possibly be true. Grandma had been one of those people for me.

My best mate Richard and I drove up to Tauranga for the funeral. Richard had already been a close mate for years, and all these years later he is still my best friend. We now live in different countries and our lives have taken us in different directions, but the friendship has remained. Having him beside me for that trip to farewell Grandma meant a lot.

Before she was buried, I went to the funeral home to see her. Standing there knowing that this was the last time I would ever see her was incredibly difficult. There wasn't anything left to fix, change or postpone. This was goodbye.

I said my farewell and thanked her for being part of my life. There was so much contained in those few words. I was thanking her for the years, the memories, the love and the bond we had shared. I couldn't take any of it with me physically, but I could acknowledge what she had meant to me before I walked away.

Grandma had asked to be buried in the same cemetery as my grandad. Knowing they would be together felt right, but there was one part of the burial that didn't sit comfortably with me. I didn't want the final act of putting my grandma to rest to be completed by a machine. She deserved something more personal than that.

After the funeral had finished and everyone else had left, Richard and I stayed behind. We asked for permission to fill Grandma's grave ourselves, by hand. Permission was given, so that is exactly what we did.

Shovelful by shovelful, Richard and I filled her grave. It was physical work, but I didn't mind. In fact, I wanted to do it. There was something deeply personal about being the one to finish the job rather than standing back while machinery did it. It gave me one final thing I could do for her.

There wasn't anything grand about it. It was simply two young blokes with shovels, staying behind after everyone else had gone. But to me, it meant something. When we finished, I knew I had done everything I could to give my beautiful grandma the respectful farewell I felt she deserved.

Later that afternoon, Richard and I went to a bar at a small restaurant where we were staying. After the emotion of the funeral and filling the grave, sitting down for a drink gave us a chance to unwind.

There was a young woman working behind the counter who served us. Her name was Steph.

We started talking and seemed to hit it off. Steph was around seven years younger than me, and there was something about her that caught my attention. I wasn't standing there thinking about relationships, families or what the future might hold. My grandma had just been buried, and my head was hardly in a place where I was planning the next stage of my life.

We talked, I got Steph's phone number, and eventually Richard and I headed back home.

For the next six months or so, Steph and I kept in contact on and off. There were phone calls and conversations, but with us living in different places, nothing moved particularly quickly. Life at the holiday park continued, as did everything else I had going on at the time.

Eventually, I decided to make another trip to Tauranga.

At that point, I still had no idea how significant that chance meeting with Steph after Grandma's funeral would become. It is strange looking back at the moments that change the direction of your life. Most of them don't arrive with any warning. There isn't a sign telling you to pay attention because the person standing in front of you is going to become an important part of your story.

That afternoon in Tauranga felt like nothing more than a chance encounter between two people who happened to get along. I couldn't possibly have known where it would lead.

Steph, the young woman who served me that day, would eventually become the mother of my two eldest sons.

On one of the saddest days of my life, while saying goodbye to someone I loved deeply, I had unknowingly met someone who would become connected to two people I had yet to meet, but who would one day mean the world to me.