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THE PATTERN THAT CONNECTS Tonight, as you touched my face, I thought of Gregory's death: how knowing perhaps that it would pleaseyou, though he had not shaved for weeks, he asked you to shave him thatday. It is a thing, I realizenow, that neither his wife nor daughter could do; and I imagine your fingers suddenly less sure, moving in ways known until then only from within. But in your hands' slow remembering you shaved him as your father had once shavedyou, with large-knuckled, inexpressible joy. One man can give another so little: not courage, not time. The weight of his head for those moments held in your hand, and then not. The melody that carries a children's rhyme through centuries, though the meaning of the words is lost. 62 ...

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