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%u00a9Jack Fritscher, Ph.D., All Rights ReservedHOW TO LEGALLY QUOTE FROM THIS BOOK234 Jack Fritscherweep till the tears flood my bed. More compassionate and understanding and loving and human than before that Friday. Valleys are filled, mountains brought low. Oh Adonai. In Advent, I advented out of Misery. The helplessness of carrying on like this. He was the best of the world I did not know. Gone, with him, that world. I open doors to Advent deserts. Crooked ways promised straightness. So golden, lord Jack, so golden. You promised never to leave me. Then you left me. I escaped on my own through the snow. I don%u2019t disintegrate, don%u2019t die till the end of days. Feel nothing. Felt so much can feel no more. They made me what I am. The one question at the dusty bottom of the academic box of philosophy and theology: How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many times can Jack die in a single 8mm Technicolor frame? I, human, shriven, over-shriven, shriveled. Nearly died. Escaped into the snow. To run time backwards, like film, to warn you not to fly to Texas. Running Zapruder in 8mm reverse: 26 seconds, a fragile six feet of film, final harrowing moments, soundtrack, Gregorian chant, Irish lament. Each instant of the 485 frames another frame of past, broken in two places, with sprockets torn out and burn marks, another frame of experience n%u00e9e innocence running round and round looped through the projector, every way but upside down.The mother, my mother, a mother awoke before dawn, got up. Beat the alarm. No jangle. Floor cold. She turned. Some former rich fullness of the morning was missing. The room was right, a bit mussed. Her house quiet, husband gone early. She remembered the smoke. No cigarette smoke languishing in the morning air. He kept his resolution, eating mints from the grocery. Today she remembered a letter would come. That day she opened the letter. Her son would write again. I would write again. Her boy%u2019s voice on paper in that strange faraway style he%u2019d fallen into during all those sheltered isolated years. His gift of a silver letter opener. His mail made her happy. Not this time. I%u2019m coming home. She cried, she cried. For the lost vocation. For the lost May chapel, for the lovely scene of Ordination in lovely summer clothes, bishop humming above window-fan, snapshots, First Blessing of a newly ordained priest, her son. The greatest thing a woman can be: the mother of a priest. Oh him. What about him? All her hopes become luggage shoved back into a closet because of a splendid trip that would never begin.Oh gone! Oh Adonai. Gone from me, I took the dream from them. No chance of home movies. No 8mm Technicolor Ordination Day. I was steady as a beam of light through a pinhole in an eclipse. An apocalypse. To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths of all the western stars, until I