Five Pictures of My Son

Abstract

It’s hard for me to talk in any kind of brief, definitive way about what this essay is. If pressed (which I sort of am now) I’d say that it’s a reflection on coming to terms with what is possibly the most terrible thing that can happen to a parent, and doing so while one is a teacher, scholar, and writer. It is also, for me, a way of moving forward, of memorializing my son while trying to find meaning in the things I’ve always done but which have changed in their significance now, in ways I’m not yet sure I can name.