Proof of Heaven

He was a demanding parent, but also a wonderful one. He treated
everyone he met with respect and carried a screwdriver in the pocket of
his lab coat to tighten any loose screws he might encounter during his
rounds of the hospital. His patients, his fellow physicians, the nurses, and
the entire hospital staff loved him. Whether it was operating on patients,
helping to advance research, training neurosurgeons (a singular passsion),
or editing the journal Surgical Neurology (which he did for a number of
years), Dad saw his path in life clearly marked out for him. Even after he
finally aged out of the operating room at seventy-one, he continued to
keep up with the latest developments in the field. After his death in 2004,
his long-time partner Dr. David L. Kelly, Jr., wrote, “Dr. Alexander will
always be remembered for his enthusiasm and proficiencies, his
perseverance, and attention to detail, his spirit of compassion, honesty,
and excellence in all that he did.” No great surprise that I, like so many
others, worshipped him.
Very early on, so far back I don’t even remember when it was, Mom
and Dad had told me that I was adopted (or “chosen,” as they put it,
because, they assured me, they’d known I was their child from the
moment they saw me). They were not my biological birth parents, but
they loved me dearly, as if I were their own flesh and blood. I grew up
knowing that I’d been adopted in April 1954, at the age of four months,
and that my biological mother had been sixteen years old—a sophomore
in high school—unwed when she gave birth to me in 1953. Her boyfriend,
a senior with no immediate prospects for being able to support a child,
had agreed to give me up as well, though neither had wanted to. The
knowledge of all this came so early that it was simply a part of who I
was, as accepted and unquestioned as the jet black color of my hair and
the fact that I liked hamburgers and disliked cauliflower. I loved my
adoptive parents just as much as I would have if they had been true blood
relations, and they clearly felt the same about me.
My older sister, Jean, had also been adopted, but five months after
they adopted me, my mother was able to conceive herself. She delivered a
baby girl—my sister Betsy—and five years later, Phyllis, our youngest
sister, was born. We were full siblings for all intents and purposes. I