The long-dreaded death of Terry Pratchett finally arrived in 2015, years after his inital prognosis predicted it would come. Pratchett spent his last years on Earth working his guts out, leaving behind a literary legacy of enormous breadth and depth.
It’s been nine months since Pratchett died, and his daughter, Rhianna (who promised no more Discworld novels after her father’s death), has penned a beautiful remembrance of him in the Guardian, recalling his as a father and an author.
We didn’t have much money, but I hardly noticed when there were woods and fields to run around in, trees to climb and animals to play with. Dad and I often walked around the countryside while he taught me which wild plants were edible and showed me hidden caves and pools in the middle of the forest. He used to whistle loudly. I could never get the hang of it, so instead he taught me the words to The Rhubarb Tart Song and Whose Pigs Are These?. We would sing them loudly, joyfully, the wildlife fleeing before us.
Dad was someone who committed to the narrative of a situation rather more than the practicality. So he would wrap me up and take me out of bed in the middle of the night to show me the glow-worms in the hedge or Halley’s Comet blazing across a star-filled sky. For him, his daughter seeing these marvels of nature was much more important than sleeping, which I could do any time. He didn’t teach me magic, he showed me it.
Sir Terry Pratchett remembered by his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett
[Rhianna Pratchett/The Guardian]
(Image: Sir Terry Pratchett, Silverlutra, CC-BY-SA)
