it's strange to have a relationship with someone who no longer exists in corporeal form.  I talk to him, think about him, but he doesn't talk back and he doesn't think about me.  I try not to think about what happened to the physical parts of him, the pain and the dying and the cremation, flames and the sheer horror of that.  I think that's the bit no-one ever talks about -  the shying away from thoughts of destruction, the loved body that held the loved person.  how do I live on, knowing that the (now minuscule) pieces of him are in a box and no longer animated?  what happened to all his memories?  what happens when I don't remember a story properly now?  Do I fill in my own interpretations?  what was he doing or thinking in that picture where he's standing next to the river holding up his mug?  I'm sure I will mangle the stories when I try to tell them, but that is all I have now.

and yet I know that although he was the star of my childhood, the one person I wanted to emulate and impress, I was only a part of his life.  that I wasn't born until he had already lived three very intense decades without me.  and I will likely (in the best of all possible worlds) live another three decades or so without him now.  it's the overlap that counts, in his life and mine, his memories and mine, his love and mine, but do I now have to be my own role model?  I'm not ready for this.  I don't know if I can.

I have a handwritten letter on my wall.  found it in my desk when I was rummaging for meaningful things in the middle of the night while he was ill and I couldn't sleep for hating everything about the impossibly fraught days and nights.  He sent me seeds every year while I was in the Arctic, to plant in my dining room. It is addressed to "Dear (my full name) AKA carrot puller", and talks about how he remembers my imaginary childhood friends.  (I had a lot of them and he was always really good about holding the hand of Molly, my favourite, when I needed to leave her somewhere for a few moments on the playground).  He wishes me luck with my Doctorate (which is why it's on the wall).

As for the carrots, he reminded me a few years ago that when I was about five, he was growing a garden and planting vegetables, including a row of carrots.  He couldn't understand why they didn't grow properly, they all were about thumb-sized and hard when he harvested them.  I eventually told him that I had been fascinated with the process, and had, over the time they were in the ground, pulled them all up to examine them regularly and then re-buried them...

what I take from the letter is that he knew me.  knew my unquenchable curiosity and offside imagination, and felt that these would assist me with my ventures.  and also I remember that he thought it was hilarious that I unearthed the carrots to check on their progress and wasn't mad at me.  and he recognized that we made connections between things in the same way.  I guess I'm gonna keep digging.