What I read after my father died

That was my original title for the essay -- what I read after my father died -- and still the one that best reflects what inspired this remembrance, which I wrote about spending the past year reading and re-reading the books my father had accumulated over a lifetime:

https://themillions.com/2023/01/the-books-that-made-my-father.html

Grateful to The Millions for agreeing to publish an essay that, strictly speaking, no one needs to read but which I most certainly needed to write.

More books to come (and truth be told, I still have to finish Gulag Archipelago. It makes for dense reading!).

I am grateful for the legacy my father left me -- a love of reading so intense it's like a beloved person with whom I share my life.

He was a voracious reader, maybe voracious just in general, which made the period of his convalescence very difficult for me. As I wrote at one point, I could scarcely recall his ever lying down much less spending days, weeks, months staring out the window, no question on his lips, no garden task to tackle, no overseas trip to plan.

Nothing can bring back all of our precious dead, but there are ways we can relive the time we spent with them, and immersing myself in the books my father loved is one such way.

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