I ended up giving a little speech. I wasn’t really planning on it, but a few people started giving speeches, so I kinda figured I had to. I knew that all the microphones on the other side of the fence were gonna be able to pick up whatever I was saying, so I kind of knew that my speech wasn’t gonna just be for the people gathered there—it was gonna be for the whole world—so I just said, you know, that my dad wasn’t ultimately a bad guy but that he just wasn’t built for this life. I said that my dad’s life should be an example to everyone of what happens when you forget that life should be fun, when you start to take it all too seriously. I kinda said, like, I’m gonna choose to remember all the good moments with my dad instead of the dark ones. I’m gonna try to remember when we were making all those recordings in St. James, or like, when we first got to L.A. and we would drive around looking at all these crazy houses and taking all these stupid pictures of each other with disposable cameras. That’s how I’m gonna remember my dad. It wasn’t a masterpiece or anything. I was just kind of riffing off the dome.

I’ll still go visit his grave every once in a while. I don’t totally know why, but sometimes I’ll just find myself there—whenever I’m in the neighborhood or I’m passing by—and I’ll see that people have left all kinds of stuff on the headstone. The cemetery’s private for the most part, but there are certain hours of the day when anyone can come take a walk through it, so sometimes I’ll see that people have left, like, little goofy things on top of the grave. Most of the time, it’ll be like, printed out pictures of the memes that people used to make about him or merchandise from my tour or like, stickers or something, but sometimes, it’ll be little notes for me—I guess people figure it’s a place I’ll drop by every once in a while—so I’ll read them if I have the time. Sometimes it’ll be like, people expressing their condolences, which is cool, and sometimes it’ll be girls trying to get that D, which is like: Seriously? That’s what you’re gonna do here? But, you know, whatever. You have to laugh. If you can’t laugh at the crazy shit people do, then your life is gonna be full of a lot of sadness.

One time, I dropped by, and I saw that Mandy had left me a little note. She didn’t put her name on the front of the card or anything, but I could tell when I opened it up that it was from her. Inside, it was totally blank except for this little drawing of a seagull. LOL. I don’t know exactly what she was trying to communicate, but it really touched my heart, to be honest. I can’t believe we didn’t know what seagulls were.