I’ve said it before. I’ll stop re-posting this piece from 2018 when I stop needing to reread it myself. —DM
My father’s been gone almost 10 years.
On the Fourth of July, I cannot decide whether I want to wake him up to tell him all about the national calamity, or let him sleep, and spare him the pain.
I think I’m going to wake him up.
My spirituality is like a lot of people’s, I think: The closest touch we have with God is the memory of our beloved dead, after we have washed them and groomed them and dressed them and arranged their quiet hands. And the closest thing to prayer is the conversations we have with them, still.
And I feel like praying today.
David, as I wrote in response to your post on LinkedIn, I have read, re-read and frankly treasured this piece ever since you first published it. I find new touchstones every time, and the truth of them resonates like the bass notes of a cathedral organ. I wish that we’d arrived at a day when it no longer felt like a love letter to a lost world, but an affirmation of what might still be possible in the days to come. And yet here it is, returning instead at the moment where what began as homage may just become an epitaph. And here we are, waving goodbye once again.