[…telling a story about his father:]

He was dying of cancer of the throat. He had been treated with radiation and surgery, leaving him weak, unable to eat, unable to speak, but fully able to feel pain.

On a table by his bed was a stack of get-well cards, every one of which came from persons and groups in Central Avenue Christian Church, the church he often criticized and whose ministers he belittled in their efforts to reclaim him.

Daddy saw me looking through the cards, and unable to speak, he scribbled on the side of a tissue box a line from “Hamlet”: “In this harsh world draw your breath in pain to tell my story.” I wrote, “And what is your story, Daddy?”

He wrote, “I was wrong.”