The author reflects on the fate of his painful reaction to his father's death, which he witnessed when he was 8 years old. A familial prohibition against speaking of, and feeling, the pain of loss determines this fate, which is likened to a life of repeated winters. This prohibition was at work in the author's choice to see a childhood father figure, Sandy, as a replacement father: to see a second father was to believe he had not lost his real one. This illusion helped the author hide and avoid his grief. Feelings of being stuck in time, frightened, unworthy, and destructive are associated with unintegrated grief. Andrew Wyeth's painting Winter 1946 inspired the author's reflections; a reproduction of this Wyeth painting served as the top page of the original memoir, but has not been included for copyright reasons.