My dad is no longer around, but he comes to visit me sometimes.

I’ll be lost in thought when his voice will appear out of thin air and whisper something in my ear, or his face will emerge and I’ll remember a scene that we shared. In those moments, he feels very real, and I sense his presence, even though I haven’t seen him in ten years.

My most vivid memory of my dad is on a summer’s evening when I was eight or nine. Since it was a scorching hot evening, where the ‘cold’ tap water was lukewarm, and you would sweat doing absolutely nothing, I crept out of my study and joined him in the air-conditioned living room. He was watching some TV while eating raw cucumber with a soy sauce and garlic mix. “Gross,” I said, watching him devour it. He smiled and broke me a piece. “Don’t hate something until you’ve tried it.”

Reluctantly, I took the cucumber, dipped it in the awful mix and put it in my mouth. It was the worst thing I had ever tasted: it was cold but warm; crunchy but liquidy; bland but spicy. It took immense self-control to keep it down.

“That sucked,” I said with a groan.

“Well, now you know.” And he burst out laughing.

There are other memories too, ones that randomly hit me out of nowhere. Words he’d said; food he’d cooked; things he’d do; places we’d been. People leave strange, little memories of themselves when they die. They bear so little significance at the time, but looking back, they are what keep them alive.