Death of a Man, Birth of a Star

Literature and Libation

My father died around 3:00 on August 12, 2013. He was 61 years old. He lived more in those six decades than most men could in twelve. If life is measured by brightness and intensity – with weak men an ember smoldering on a stick of incense and great men a blaze feeding on a forest – my father was a supernova.

As his light faded, liver and kidneys unable to hold the battlements against the three year siege from Chronic Lymphatic Leukemia, he saw things. Things that some may attribute to heightened brain activity near death, or hallucinations caused by elevated ammonia levels, or delusion caused by prolonged time in the ICU. Things that others may attribute to gods, or the God, or that shining pre-glimpse of the afterlife pointing the way to the next world.

Some of what he saw scared him. Monsters snarling…

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