how long does it take to gather the courage to read a book? in my case for this book, perhaps twenty-odd years. it was as if i feared the very reading of the manuscript would precipitate the tragedy of which he writes.
having finally got on with it, i learn that the dread of anticipation exceeds the pain of plowing through it.
for one thing, it is mercifully short. four chapters and he is done. for another, he is honest and provocative and vulnerable and bare. but not, as perhaps i feared, stuck in the rut of his pain.
bereavement, he posits, is as much a part of love as courtship and marriage and the honeymoon and the loving. 'twas a time such a posit would have been unthinkable. having known so much joy and fulness with HOM, i am willing to begin to consider this may be so.
we look through the glass darkly. sometimes we are granted to misunderstand a little less completely.
