But by the time my father had lost his skunk-patterned hair and his fingernails yellowed, I had already found more trappings of eternity in poetry than in personified abstraction. It seemed to me that the only correct response was a slow-burning rage in which god, or an idea of one, did not factor at all, let alone anxieties about big-B Belief, a fact my father would probably lament but also understand.

On the day of his funeral—held at the same church in which holy water maybe beaded atop the head of Tricia’s casket—the dolorous organ seemed to enter me and vibrate within, as if trying to wake a part of me I’d long ago released.

Our guests at the baptism on Sunday agreed, all of our friends and family, many of whom simply don’t care for church or really can’t stand church or usually wouldn’t be caught dead in a church, but all of them, all of them agreed: Yes, what a beautiful cathedral, and wasn’t the choir amazing, and…

Sometimes I take the Host in the mouth, other times I take it in the hand. Mostly I take it in the mouth. That’s because of the strangeness of it, the good strangeness. I don’t generally let other people feed me, let alone grown men. Let alone priests. So, this meal is not like other…