RIP S.K. Harihareswara

[brainwane]

My father died on Thursday night of a massive heart attack. He'd just had dinner and was washing his hands when he slumped against the wall. He died very quickly in my mother's arms. He was 74.

I'm in India now, alternately engaging with and hiding from the constant flow of people and food and emotion. I saw his corpse yesterday. Tomorrow we'll start going to orphanages and retirement homes to feed people in memory of my dad. That's what he wanted in lieu of the standard prayer rituals.

In the coming weeks and months I expect I'll write a lot about my family. Right now I just wanted to tell you what's up. Your condolences are welcome in comments, emails, or instant messages. But I especially encourage you to comment with happy memories of your own family -- or, if you have none of those or none that you want to share, happy memories of any sort.

(cross-posted from my blog)

Comments

[quinfirefrorefiddle]

I am so very sorry for your loss.

I usually say that my favorite childhood memories with my dad involve taking apart and reassembling smoke bombs around the Fourth of July- but honestly those are kind of fuzzy and run together. A clear one that comes to mind was when he greeted my best friend and I in the parking lot of my summer camp with ice-cold root beers and the car's air conditioning going full blast. After a week of herding kids with no pop or A/C, it was the perfect treat. He's a little awkward, usually, but sometimes he's really good at stuff like that.