Nine weeks ago. The snow had melted some. Before noon I drove up to the hospital with my sister. We talked on the way, we knew what was going to happen eventually, we were already talking in the past tense, but we didn't know. When we got there my the rest of the family was in tears. My dad just said, "I was in the room." There's no reason to think that crappy stuff isn't randomly distributed throughout the year, but it also means that there's a non-zero chance of crappy stuff happening on Christmas or someone's birthday. It just happens and it happened to happen on my dad's birthday.
Sometimes I think my sister and I have found more in common with each other since he died. Other times, I think that maybe the only thing we really had in common was him, he was the link between us. But then you think, "What really qualifies as having stuff in common?" Because I guess I have stuff in common people I know and still not too many of them think Rothko-Jell-O, which is Jell-O salad created in the style of a Mark Rothko painting, is very funny (I do - I think it is very funny). Because it is more about time and less about checklists.
There's a tea - lapsang souchong - that tastes and smells pretty much like a campfire. A lot of people think it is quite awful, but I like it - it reminds me of my parents house. In the evening the air around my parents house always smells faintly like burning wood. I think someone nearby has a functioning fireplace that they use quite often. It's become a very comforting smell, but you only really smell when you leave the house. You look up and, unlike in the city, see stars. Walk the dog, looking straight up at the sky.
