Each year that passed, I would think — now is the time to write about the years of silence. But I just forgot about it. At four, I finally come to reckoning with not writing for a long time.

I got happy. That’s the trouble with happiness. I met Freya, we got married, we’ve had a kid. August has grown. I have a job I enjoy. And so I never thought to write. I just wanted to sit in the happiness.

I’m not unhappy now, fortunately. But Graham died, and he left behind a body of writing. A man who never really spoke of his writings except obliquely: a thoughtful man, but not ponderously so. In his last couple of years – spurred on by walking the camino de Santiago – he was filled, suddenly it appears, with the philosopher’s urgency.

The urge to write is a tongue of fire, and it spreads. So here I am, again, writing after four years of obscure happiness. I hope I leave a body of writing worthy of Graham’s.