Splintered Avatar

When people die, they generally leave behind an estate- a helpful reminder that you really can't take it with you.  And where there is an estate- regardless of how insignificant that estate may be- there are generally heirs.  Often those heirs are the children of the person who died.

My grandmother had three children- my uncle, my aunt, and my dad.  My dad, as you may have surmised, died quite some time ago.  Which means that the share of the estate that would have gone to him goes instead to my brother and I.

We heirs have met up to discuss Certain Matters, and although there are four of us we form a triangle: my aunt sprawled out on the floor, my uncle reclining in a chair, and my brother and I sitting closer to one another.  Looking at it like this, this group of four forming a three-sided shape, I am suddenly overwhelmed with the knowledge that I am there not so much as myself, but as a symbol of someone else.  That my brother and I are, in essence, the avatar of our father.  And when I say avatar, I do not mean in the video game sense.  I mean it in one of it's older definitions: "a visible manifestation or embodiment of an abstract concept".

That's what you become, when you die- an abstract concept.  Or, sometimes, especially if you die young, you become deified.  Either way, the word avatar remains appropriate for what my brother and I, collectively, have become.  It is disconcerting, to look at him, and to realize that in this moment we are not individuals, we are two halves of a missing whole- moreover, we are two halves of two wholes, because someday my mother will no longer be her own manifestation, either.

Disconcerting.  Sobering.  And really kind of freaky.

The Other Half of What I Am