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44 By the Time I Met Brian’s Father He was wasted to a terrifying thinness, his hands weak, his voice silenced by a breathing tube, so he could only write brief sentences, his eyes astounded by his helplessness, his brain ringing with anger, his feet restless and in pain, a TV blaring nothing and nothing and more nothing. And we were all around his bedside: Nan, and Dan, and Becky, and Brian, her fiancé, and when my turn came I stood over him, feeling monstrous with good health, touched him, and told him I knew how proud he was of Brian, his son. He summoned a pencil, and slowly, like an airplane forming a letter at a time across the sky, he wrote that he was hanging in there to see their happiness. He was seeing their wedding every time he looked at them. He was speaking with the single syllable of his love for them. We pass, he said. But look how worthy they are, how sane and loving and worthy, as they stand with the sun on their faces, and have our eyes and our hair. ...

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