Here is one of my secrets: my dead father — I realize that he’s dead — is constantly on hand for me. I see him, we have conversations, I dream of him — it’s as if he never died. I know that my dad is a feature of my delusion but he’s where I want him to be.

I grieved my father’s death when I first saw his corpse and as his casket was lowered into that damned concrete liner that my state requires. Maybe I only grieved his remains. He had one of those standing-room-only funeral masses. Not enough indoor space to display all the flowers so most went to the nearby gravesite. The crowd at the gravesite was overwhelming: I have never been hugged so much, never had so many secrets whispered in my ear. “He was a Saint. He is surely in the presence of God.”

My dad is dead; he is not real. He has not aged — he would be, hmm, in mid-nineties, now. I can never explain the scope of my peculiar delusion but I can say that my dad is a, if not the, central pillar of all that I need to carry on.

I don’t believe in spirits or gods or any kind of life after death. The father that I see, the father who advises me, he’s an amalgamation of my memories. He is hidden inside of my bicameral brain, nestled under folds, close to the confounding densities of synapses constantly firing, lost amongst the neurotransmitters.

No one carries as many memories of my dad than me. He — and others — will die with me.

As you grieve your friend’s death you’re remembering him. He remains alive in your memories; how could it be otherwise? It’s natural to see him and speak to him, I think. Maybe not for forty-years but for awhile.