Eh, just buy stock in Nestle’s, as we do this twice a year.

There’s an epilogue/prologue to all this: Dad and I were reflecting on Patrick’s birthday last night and we can’t even imagine Patrick at 56. It defies all reason to think of him as a middle-aged cartographer, eating oatmeal and making maps and reading sci-fi and losing track of the world for weeks on end. It’s insane, because this is how I always think of him, still.

Me? I make it a drinking game; every time I think of how much I miss him, I do a shot. Of Nestle’s, of course.

This is what I wrote last year about RackRack (my sister’s name for him) and his birthday.