Right around the time that my dad got sick (like when he moved in with us and we realized how sick he was), I’d restarted one of my regular rewatches of Adventure Time.

One of the things that will never leave me is the way that the episode with the song “remember you” (I think it’s also called that) captured what it felt like to lose your dad when he’s right in front of you.

As I watched this episode, even playing the song for him at one point, I realized that my dad was Simon and I was Marceline. He lost himself despite his best efforts and there was nothing I could do to help him remember himself. All I could do was remember him.

I really love this song and I always will, but I ugly cry every time at Marceline’s helplessness and the realization that Ice King will never be the Simon she loved again and that there’s nothing she can do to change it because the thing that has changed him so very terribly… Is the only thing keeping him in her life even in this diminished state.

I probably shouldn’t be re-watching the songs when I’m in an emotionally fragile state (aka always), but watching some of Adventure Time with my dad is some of the last memories I have of him before he ended up in the hospital and then in the care facility he was at before he died. Remembering him is all I can do.

And it’s really weird to miss someone who was a little bit distant from me because of how he was raised, but so much is happening and I keep thinking about how he’s the parent I could have told us all too he would have listened, and he would have supported me.

And I don’t have that anymore and I never will again.