Since I can't bring back the dead, and my attempts to re-animate my father through slavish imitation have not worked, I have resorted to using all sorts of 

self-invented mumbo jumbo

to feel his presence in the world again. I haven't built a shrine for him, but I've set plates for him once or twice. I think of him sometimes when I hear some news tidbit that I think he'd respond to robustly (he would have had a field day with the U.S. government shutdown of 2013). I try to keep him alive through my kids, but (as you'll see) it doesn't really work. 

The guy's just dead, I keep telling myself. But there are varying degrees of dead, you know? People who just stopped breathing are not equally as dead as people who left no trace on earth, and who nobody remembers. My dad isn't all that dead, and in creating daddylabyrinth I guess I want to inch him closer to the state of the fresh corpse. 

Which is as close as I'll get. But I'll make others remember him—don't you worry. 

1. OCTET FOR DREAMERS OF THE DEAD
2. SUPERNATURAL COMMUNICATIONS
3. HEY DAD, MEET YOUR GRANDKIDS
4. IT'S NOT THE SAME FOR THE BOYS
5. CAN'T LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE
6. MY FATHER AS THE BERLIN WALL