A mind needs books.

My dad was a great reader, and he loved fantasy and science fiction most of all. When I was a kid, he read all of the Lord of the Rings books to me, and then The Silmarillion, and then the Unfinished Tales and all the rest. He tried, bless him, to make me love Dune. (I never could. I'm sorry, Dad.)

About ten years ago, I read the first A Song of Ice and Fire book, A Game of Thrones. It was not an immediate love: it took me three tries over several months to get past the first two chapters. But once I did, I was hooked. I told my dad that he had to read these books. He read them all in the space of a summer. He reread them, as did I. (I think I'm up to my fourth re-read, except for A Dance with Dragons, because god, Quentyn Martell is just the fucking worst.) He came to love them even more than his beloved Tolkien books, and I was so thrilled to get to share Martin's world with him. Dad would joke sometimes that we'd get an end of real winter on the planet before we ever got The Winds of Winter. When Martin released his first Targaryen history book, Fire and Blood, last year, my dad and I read it simultaneously. It's the last book I remember having a conversation with him about, on the last day I saw him before his car accident. We were both disappointed the book had ended so early and were looking forward to the second installment.

Tomorrow is the last episode of Game of Thrones, the show, which is not as good as the books, but which my dad nonetheless enjoyed. Just a few months ago, we were talking about how fortuitous it was that he was coming home on April 12, two days before the premiere. When my mom collapsed and we discovered her massive cancer, he came home two weeks early, and he crashed his car before he ever got to see a single episode. I didn't even get to tell him that Arya killed the Night King, although he'd have liked that, because Arya was always one of his favorite characters.

I know that Dad never getting to know how Martin (and the showrunners) wrapped things up in Westeros is one little loss among many greater ones. But Dad loved this world I introduced him to, and he was really excited to see how things turned out, and the reality that he never will is startlingly hard to wrap my mind around.