SIX MONTHS LATER, I awoke to my mother’s frantic voice as she begged my father to awaken. He did not. He was dead of a massive heart attack at age forty-three.
It was impossible that the exuberance that had been my father—his riotous laughter, his dogged perseverance of knowledge and truth—had simply dissipated. Where did all of that energy go? Vaporized, maybe—but into what, and where? What happened to the bounty of his being, his love for us, for me?
I tried to remember every