The longer I sat motionless, breathing deeply, trying to inhale the
last scent of the fallen world, the more I resented its continuing
solidity. Nostalgia turned to fatigue.
Sometime after 1:30 I went to bed. I glimpsed Dad as I left, his face
frozen in the dark, the light from the TV leaping across his square
glasses. He sat as if posed, with no agitation, no embarrassment, as if
there were a perfectly mundane explanation for why he was sitting up,
alone, at near two in the morning, watching Ralph and Alice Kramden
prepare for a Christmas party.
He seemed smaller to me than he had that morning. The
disappointment in his features was so childlike, for a moment I
wondered how God could deny him this. He, a faithful servant, who
suffered willingly just as Noah had willingly suffered to build the ark.
But God withheld the flood.