What do the living know
about the dead? I was called upon
to wonder when the well-meaning
camp director’s wife who knew
parts of my family asked
where I stood in relation
to the brother who’d died, she had heard.
Died? I said. Yes, I believe, cancer,
she said. Oh, I said, that,
I believe, was me, and I am yet”
even taking odd pleasure along
with the pang of being a ghost”
among the living.
(What do, after all, the living
know about the dead, me included?)
James Andrew Miller is author of “Other Plans: Journal of an Illness,” FT, March.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
The Realities of Empire (ft. Nathan Pinkoski)
In this episode, Nathan Pinkoski joins R. R. Reno on The Editor’s Desk to talk about his…
Can Liberals Be Pronatalists?
Last year the United Nations Population Division predicted that global population will peak in approximately sixty years...
From Little Rock to Minneapolis
Recent reports and images from Minneapolis reminded me of Little Rock in 1957, where attempts were made…
