fathers ovenbird Facebook tells me that your father died a week ago. I send you a message right away. I say I’m sorry. Our friendship has survived almost thirty years, but we don’t talk frequently these days. I didn’t know your father well, but I want to acknowledge the grief you must be experiencing. I don’t think we should have to live in a world without fathers. Not yet. You’re in that world now. I want you to know that I’m here if you need me. You suggest a video chat in May. I say I’ll reach out again soon. When we were teenagers I went to visit you in Guelph. Your father drove us to the Hillside Folk Music Festival. We sang in the car. We explored the universe of all our inside jokes. We sat in a tent in the August heat and learned to play the didgeridoo alongside a woman who had declined to wear any clothes above the waist. I tried to learn circular breathing with a straw but never got it down. We slept in your basement and your dad made us dinner. Schnitzel. Why do I remember that when so many things have faded? He must have asked me about my life but all the details are gone. In the rest of your future you are fatherless. My own future will take the same narrative turn. We will live in a world without our fathers. And we’ll need each other so much more then, won’t we? We who were always destined to be orphans. An older mentor of mine once said that she didn’t truly know who she was until her parents were gone and her kids were grown and she was suddenly alive for herself in a way she had never been before. There was grief and loss sewn into it all, but also a process of self-discovery that she could never have anticipated. It gave me hope for survival. I hope you are finding a way to grieve that feels real to you. You say that you’re numb. You say it might be the medication. But it might just be that the heart takes a while to catch up to a tear in reality so profound. The mind insists, but the heart refuses to believe. Maybe to our hearts death is just an abstract idea. It doesn’t stop loving just because there’s no body to love. In the world without our fathers we will learn to love what isn’t there and honour ghosts with our continued act of living, and remind each other that we were children once, with fathers who gave us a world that would, ultimately, unmake them. 260411 what's it to you? who go blather from