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151 [ [ Dear Kelly, I’m so sorry to hear about the death of your father. I hope it doesn’t sound presumptuous to say that I felt as though I knew him myself, based on all the kind words you said about him and the anecdotes you told in our conversations and letters. My thoughts and prayers go out to you and your family that you will be comforted during this difficult time. Although inevitable and sometimes even a blessing when it brings suffering to an end, the death of anyone close is always a severe loss. Yes, your father lived eighty-four years, and yes, that is a long life, but it never seems to have been long enough when death takes from us our loved ones, especially our parents. Your bond with him is unlike any other. In many significant ways you were and are closer to him than you’ll ever be to your friends or siblings or future husband. He knew you better than could anyone else except your mother, who knows you in still different ways. He was there from the beginning . He is a part of you. How fortunate you were to have grown up in a loving home, in an atmosphere of confidence and harmony, surrounded by people who had a sound sense of what is worthwhile, who didn’t just talk about the moral and religious life, but practiced it. Along with those memories, your father has left you with the immeasurable gift of a story to tell—and someday, when you’ve absorbed and made peace with his death, you’ll begin to write it. After my own father died in 2005, my brother and I received many letters of consolation. One of the most meaningful came from a dear colleague whose words may now help you as well: No one wants to say good-bye to a father whose scope and breadth encompassed the entire horizon. Dale, even as you grieve, you will bec h a p t e r 1 4 When a Parent Dies 152 w h e n a p a r e n t d i e s gin to bring your father to life for all of us as you set yourself to the task of telling his story. He will be your companion as you write, your companion as you read, and your companion at every book signing. He will be free now to be wherever he chooses, and he will choose to be with you. And rightly so, for you have been the ideal son, the son every father wishes for, the son your father received. May you be at peace knowing peace is the gift you gave your father. No doubt, peace seems a long way off from you right now, but that will change. C. S. Lewis has written, “Some great good comes from the dead to the living in the months or weeks after the death, as if Our Lord welcomed the newly dead with the gift of some power to bless those they have left behind.” I believe that. The day after my father’s funeral I returned to campus to teach my Shakespeare class for which, coincidentally, I had assigned Hamlet two weeks before. As I opened the discussion, I saw my father, seated at the back of the room and dressed in the dark blue suit, light blue shirt, and red tie he had worn for his fiftieth wedding anniversary and, now, eleven years later, he was buried in. He was listening intently, as he always did when either of his sons spoke. When I recited Hamlet’s words— “As long as I have memory, as long as I live, I will remember you, and what you have told me”—I was speaking to my father. When I talked about Hamlet’s broodings on death and the life hereafter and then said the lines, “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, / Rough-hew them how we will,” my father was taking in every word. And when I concluded the hour, he gave me his familiar nod of approval as if to say: “You did well. Stay with it.” Afterward one student remarked that he had never heard the play discussed with such passion or belief. There is some of Hamlet in us all because there is some of our father in us all. In the days that followed, Dad seemed very near to me, and that...

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