“There lives a voice there now, in the house of my memory, the ghost of the last thing my father said to me. This ghost is a comedian.”

Ask me how my father died and I’ll say, He fell and hit his head. I’ll say, It was a blood vessel that burst. I’ll say, It only took 30 seconds, because that’s what the coroner said. I’ll say, I don’t really know, because no one was there to see what happened, just my father, and he didn’t bother to leave a note, as I’m sure he would have written, Well I’ll be dipped in shit. He was always one to make these kinds of remarks at an inappropriate time—say, when you’re losing a lot of blood, when you’re crawling through broken bottles to find a place to die. (more…)