Laeviss remembers his father.
He was a kind, generous, gentle man, with a good heart and a weakness for very bad jokes. My early childhood is filled with memories of the times I spent with him. He would give rides to neighborhood children in the trailer pulled by his tractor. He took me ice skating and swimming and horseback riding. We would go on walks together. He liked to sing me funny songs.
When he became ill, I was too young to know that he would never recover. I only knew that we had to hide the car keys, lest he try to drive, and that he had to be watched constantly to make sure he didn't accidentally cause a fire, or himself an injury.
Eventually, he was confined to a nursing home, where we would visit him. Except it was no longer him. The man we went to visit one day gave me a puzzled look and couldn't remember my name. He thought he was his own nine-year-old self again. He thought I was one of his siblings, maybe. But he wasn't sure.
Then, one day, he never noticed me at all, he just stared into space. The ravens had gone.
There is nothing more heart-wrenching than looking into the eyes of someone you love, knowing them, and remembering all of that shared history, and all of the feeling behind it, and finding that this beloved person does not remember who you are anymore.
Odin says remember who you are.
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