Short day, long night

Today is my father’s birth­day. We always called it the short­est day of the year: he said it was an easier birth­day to get through than other birth­days. We ignored the fact that it was also the longest night of the year.

My father took his own life two years ago, a few months before his eighty-​fifth birth­day. He was unable to find happi­ness or peace, but he knew how to find the end.

This tiny publi­ca­tion is a memo­r­ial of sorts, writ­ten after dispers­ing his ashes one year after he died.