His cello. We put that up. I remember sitting on the bar when no one was there, thinking it was odd how sad everyone was. They told me he was in hospital every day until his funeral. I didn't understand anything until I was standing in the church. I don't think he was religious, I actively doubt it, but, God was he superstitious.

The church smelled like old wood childhood. Someone pressed a program into my hand, though I didn’t know what I was meant to do with it. His name was printed on the front in a font that felt too formal for him, like dressing a man who lived in jumpers and scuffed shoes in a stiff suit he’d never have chosen. We didn't bring Dee. We should've. People kept bending down to tell me things; how brave I was, how proud he’d be, how much he loved that cello, but their words slid off me. I didn’t have the shape of grief yet. I only had the shape of confusion.

It wasn’t until the music started that something inside me shifted. Not the hymns, that felt too much like being 14 again, in white robes and staring into Yvette's skull hoping it would burn, and I could take her place. It was the piece the cellist played near the end. A single line, low and warm, the kind of sound that seems to come from the cellist's body than the instrument. I didn’t know the name of it then. I still don’t. But it was the first thing that made sense. The first thing that felt like him.

I remember looking up at the stained glass, all those colours arranged into stories I no longer thought true, and thinking he would have hated the fuss. He would have made some joke about the incense or the candles setting the place on fire. He would have rolled his eyes at the sermon. But he would have listened to the cello. He would have closed his eyes and let it wash over him like he always did, as if music was the only thing keeping the sickness from claiming his will.

And standing there, I realised everyone else wasn’t sad about the funeral. They were sad about the silence that would follow. The empty barstool, the cello that would stay in its case, the space he used to fill without even trying.

I miss you Amrik. And you haven't even been gone more than a month.