The National

How to act when your main qualifier dies.

If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive, do you think ghosts will do it after?

— Kabir

I was briefly in New York City last week but had to cut the trip short because my father’s health had nosedived. Over the holidays, he caught pneumonia. He eventually recovered from that, but he had trouble swallowing food and liquids after, so his strength nev…