on the eve of fifteen years I lay in bed fearing my father is passing out of memory and into legend as the childhood friends who grew up with him fade from my life, the last pets who lived with him all gone themselves these past five years, old family friends scattered across the country, now almost everyone in my life knows him only in the stories I share, in pictures on Facebook every birthday and death anniversary, and as I lay here picking open old wounds both real and metaphorical I know deep in my gut he’s become part of the immutable past, a thing from my childhood like stuffed toys and crayons or the sweets I can no longer eat yet reminisce over fondly, tonight I lay crying in a bedroom in a house he never stepped foot in and realize my father is immortalized more now in the traditions I use to honor his memory than the shared experiences of the things themselves and most days that’s sufficient, it really is, my wife talks about him like she knows him and most days it feels like she does but then this day, this awful day, rolls around and I remember she never knew him, none of them did, because he wasn’t at my college graduation or my wedding because he is dead, he is dead, he is dead and the way he lives on is that of all myths: through written word and oral tradition, those transient, untrustworthy things, and not even the greatest storytellers in history could truly capture what it felt like to be hugged by him, no, memory and mythology can’t replace a person’s physical presence one bit