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One of the first things
Thomas Mira Y Lopez said to me

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was, Oh, you're part
of the dead dads club.

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He quickly continued, I didn't
mean that to sound irreverent.

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And coming from him, it didn't.

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It sounded understanding
empathetic, knowing.

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There's a quality
about his language

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that's sincere and endearing,
with an underpinning

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of dark humor.

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We hear this engaging voice
throughout his latest work,

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The Book of Resting Places.

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In this book, his language
invites us into his mind

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and into his
obsession with death.

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We struggle with what
remains mean to us.

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With what of us remains on
Earth when we no longer do,

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and with what that means
to those who love us.

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To those who still remain.

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Mira y Lopez's prose brings to
mind mathematical remainders

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with what we do when
something doesn't fit,

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when something is left over.

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What do we do with
those remains.

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The Book of Resting
Places asks us

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to tussle with the different
ways we deal with the dead.

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Whether that means
entertaining a mother's plea

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to stay in her apartment,
Egyptian sarcophagus style,

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or touring a cryogenics lab to
imagine what happens to those

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frozen in time, he approaches
death in as many ways as he can

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through trees with falling
limbs in Central Park

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and exhumed graves in Tucson.

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Through this
collection of essays,

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we see a mind trying
to wrap itself

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around the ultimate
unknowable entity.

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Around death.

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In perhaps my favorite essay,
"Parallax," Mira y Lopez

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uses the astronomical
term to encompass both

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his approach and his process.

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He explains "Parallax"
stating, simply put,

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we see things differently
from different places.

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His book, of course, is the
embodiment of this phenomenon.

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And the word, embodiment,
feels right placed next

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to his assertion.

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When something
becomes disembodied,

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we struggle to see it
for what it really is.

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When someone
becomes disembodied,

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we struggle to see him
for what he once was.

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In looking for an
answer, an equation

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to make sense of
his father's death,

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Mira Y Lopez shows us
that sometimes there

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are no answers, that sometimes
the answer is in the looking

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itself.

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So thank you, Tommy, for sharing
your words with us, for sharing

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your looking with us.

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For teaching us how to
sit with remainders.