I think that this quote from Smith's article says a lot about the relationship that she had with her father. They seem like they were very close, and she had a hard time dealing with the fact that she was losing him. The fact that she refused to see him after he died makes sense. She would not want to see him as anything other than what he was when he was living. To see his body laying there with nothing inside would mean that he is truly gone. However, to know that he is truly gone and to have that realization sink in would also have been an important experience for Smith. She ended up putting herself right in the middle of the kind of joke that she and her father had always enjoyed so much; a tragic mistake. She ends up clinging to the dust remains of her father, and even tasting them at one point, perhaps because she did not have any closure with her father.
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I agree. I thought that way Smith dealt with her father's remains was one of the most interesting parts of the essay. Instead of finding closure right after his death she waited until it was perhaps too late for the kind of closure she needed. So then she was left with a tupperware of ashes thinking what do I do now?
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