Huddled in the corner of an old student haunt, we raised a glass to absent friends. It wasn't the first time we'd thought of them that day, and it wouldn't be the last.

It was everything a college reunion should be. We laughed, swapped memories and shared a few in-jokes as we made a nostalgic pilgrimage around places of lost youth.

But this was no ordinary reunion. For a start I was never actually a student at this college, and this was my first visit there. And the student days we recalled took place several years before I was born.

I don't know quite when it happens, but at some point in your life you cease seeing your parents as just parents. I was, of course, aware that mine once had another life before I arrived, but other than leafing through old photos occasionally I hadn't given it much thought.

Lately I've thought about it quite a lot. Since losing both my parents within a few months, I've reflected on their lives in a way that feels different. When they died I had cards and letters from their old friends, recalling happy times long before they became my mum and dad.

Shortly before my dad's death in January, we came across an old college photo with my parents standing together at the back. It was taken in 1963, around the time they met. Dad has strapping rugby-player's shoulders and Mum looks like my sister.

They met at teacher training college in Didsbury, and it was here where my sister and I found ourselves recently, at the invitation of some old friends. Mike, Paul and Brin, who were at Didsbury with our parents, kindly offered to give us a tour of the village and its old college buildings. We walked past their student digs - large Victorian houses once run by eccentric landladies, now des-res family homes with 4X4s on the driveways - and called in at their old local for half a cider, Mum's tipple.

Dad's rooms were on a campus no longer in use; a cluster of empty buildings with weed-choked guttering and wind whistling through broken windows. We peered into the old social hall, a place once rocking with light jazz, budding friendships and romance, now eerily quiet.

Heading to the rugby pitch, Paul recalled the team walking down the lane in their kit. I thought of Dad and the sound of his boot studs scraping on the ground.

The college buildings are due to be demolished soon, but for Mike, Paul and Brin, the memories will linger long after bricks and mortar are turned to dust. And we will always cherish our glimpse into a time and place that brought our parents together.