Dreading the grave matter of my dad’s anniversary

I HAVEN’T visited my father’s grave in a year.

I didn’t realise I was avoiding it, (it wouldn’t be called denial if I had), but as the first anniversary of his death approached — when a headstone would be erected — I realised a sense of dread about the place: a filled-in hole in the ground where what’s left of my father is slowly merging with the elements.

I had helped lift him into his coffin, so his physical death was still vivid in my mind.