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Miloš, my son, I want to thank you for so many things.

It will be years before you read this. Probably not until I am gone and you are sifting through the internet looking for scraps of me -- either to scream at or take comfort in -- but you will find this, I know it, and I am speaking to you from this hot July night, across however many years have passed, to tell you that I loved you deeper than blood, deeper than the parental bond.

You are my hero. Everything about you fills me with awe. Your art blows my mind. Your athleticism is beautiful to behold. Your kindness and maturity constantly humble me. Your hair is glorious. Your imagination is ineluctable. The control you have of your temper, your ability to find calm when your storms are brewing, eclipses anything I could ever approach. Your passion for the smallest things is inspiring. And somehow we have become more than son and father. We have become friends. And that is the greatest stroke of luck I have ever experienced.

So imagine what it means to me to have been given -- by you -- the opportunity to read The Road aloud. Every syllable of McCarthy's book is infused with love between the man and the boy, and you shared it with me, night after night, curled up in the red light of my head lamp, even though the nights are too hot in the summer and the girls were clamouring to get to bed. Yet once I started reading, the whole world that is melted away, and we found ourselves in that terrible, awful, seemingly inevitable world that will be, but there we were with each other, being reminded night after night that the fire is love, and we have it for each other because we let it in, we let it be.

Soon you will grow older and you will drift away from me, but I will carry nights like tonight, nights when our tears were shared over the fate of the boy and the man, in my heart and mind until death, and maybe then, when my star stuff is returned to the universe, you will find this letter and read it one night (maybe even the night you finish reading this book to one of your children), and you will remember our love for one another, and you will be back in your childhood home as if you never left, and you will remember the hope of the fire that lifts The Road up beyond seeming hopelessness, and you will remember why we go on, and you will know that you were the greatest friend I ever had.

I love you, Miloš. You are a beautiful being. You have the fire. And you are my fire. I hope your life, when you read this, is as wonderful as mine is because of you right now. Kiss the ones you love, my son, and know that you have always been loved yourself.

Love, Me