"This is what we know of Dad.  He was a
quiet boy.  He drifted off on family walks,
he doodled and drew and his feelings were
easily hurt by rough kids at school.  He
didn't have a head for sums.  He spent the
first twenty years of his life reading books,
being not-bad-but-not-skilled at football
and waiting for Mum.  He loved the Greek
myths and Russians and Joyce.  He was
waiting to be our Dad.

And then our Mum and Dad were in love
and they were truly dry-stone strong and
durable and people speak of ease and joy
and spontaneity and the fact that their two
smells became one smell, our smell.  Us.

Afterwards he was quieter.  He was, for two
or three years, by all accounts, very odd.
He had the perpetual look and demeanour
of someone floating, turning in the beer-
gold light of evening and being surprised
by the enduring warmth.  A rolled-over
shoulder half-squint half-smile.  Caught
baffled by the perplexing slow-release of
sadness for ever and ever and ever.  Which
I suppose, looking back, was because of us.
He couldn't rage.  He couldn't want to die.
He couldn't rail against an absence when
it was grinning, singing, freckling in the
English summer tweedle dee tweedle dum
in front of him.  Perhaps if Crow taught
him anything it was a constant balancing.
For want of a less dirty word: faith. 

A howling sorry which is
yes which is thank you which is onwards."
-Grief is the Thing with Feathers by Max Porter