The sun is bright and hopeful this morning. I'm grateful for this after ten days in a dark tunnel.
From personal experience I can say that death is hardest on the living. While in the hospital, not once but twice, I was close to dying in the past dozen years, and it felt like it would be so easy to simply slip away. Living, on the other hand…well, that takes a heck of a lot of work.
When we consider those from our lives we have lost, we can be haunted by good and bad ghosts. In the case of my brother Stephen's death, it was compounded by the fact that we have not been close for years.
In both Following Atticus and Will's Red Coat, I touched on how distant our family is. Some still get together for Thanksgiving and Christmas, but there is little closeness. Intimacy is born from vulnerability, and we learned to protect ourselves early in the Ryan household.
Aunt Marijane, you'll remember her from Will's Red Coat, noted in hindsight that she was impressed that many of my brothers and sis…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Tom Ryan, Author to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.