Before I ever saw my father’s other children, I learned that he wanted them destroyed. The request had been entrusted to a neighbor sometime before he died. It was simple, specific, and apparently important enough to repeat: After I die, find the stuffed animals and cremate them.
ESSAYS
Essays and fragments on family mythology, inheritance, grief, design, memory, estrangement, and the absurd evidence people leave behind.
In my late teens, I found my father. This was before the internet turned amateur investigation into a
“My dad has died.” The words came out while I was sitting in my car, talking on the phone about a text I had received earlier that
“Oh, a house.” That was my first thought when we pulled up. Not disappointment. Not surprise, exactly.
