I want to tell two stories concerning the loss of loved ones. The second loss involves something I call a spirit thread. The first one does not. The difference between the two is huge. I’ll be quick with the first, because I’ve told this story many times before.
When I was a boy, my family matriarchs believed we would burn in hell forever if we professed any faith but Seventh-Day Adventism. But the churchgoing practiced by members of that faith made me feel like a kind of Joseph held captive in Egypt. The end of my captivity came shortly after the death of my oldest brother. I was thirteen at the time; John, seventeen. He was my best friend, my protector, the noblest of big brothers, and he’d been born with a congenital heart defect. After three failed surgeries his heart became too shredded to be repaired yet kept faithfully beating. This was hard on those who loved him. Though his doctors pronounced his doom, John held on month after month. He contracted a staph infection but stayed alive for weeks even then. I went to visit him often during this awful limbo. Each time I visited, his inability to launch into the sort of blithe, quirky conversations we’d always enjoyed, and (yes, I was this superficial) his increasingly appalling appearance, made me flee his room soon after I got there. I’d then huddle on the floor in the hospital hallway, burning with shame because I was too weak to remain at his side.
