E-prime and Auo

For the last few weeks I have thought from time to time about today, when Auo should light up the house celebrating her fifteenth birthday. I have wondered how to “celebrate” it. I feel foolish buying her presents that she will never see, and I feel traitorous not giving her something.

Finally I decided to do two things. Firstly I decided to buy two Lego mini-figures because we both liked them for the same childish reasons. We both wanted to find out which one we had got from the sixteen on offer in the current series, and secondly we always pretended that the one we got disappointed us, knowing that the one we really wanted would not have excited us any more.

Secondly I decided to commit myself to writing everything in e-prime for at least the next year, including all the daily entries in The Time of Day and this entry here. I had explained the idea behind e-prime to Auo in the months before she died, because I had decided to write my doctoral thesis in this way. The idea had both amused and interested her although she also thought it dopey. She tried writing in e-prime herself but lost interest in a while, quite reasonably, because she could not do some of her English homework without using some part of the verb to be.

As a way of remembering and commemorating her, this probably makes no sense to anyone except me (and Auo). That, I suspect, makes it a perfect way of remembering her.

And I very definitely do.