The American Scholar

A Voice From Beyond

After my mother died, I taught my father how to hear her voice and feel her presence. I did not have a strong conviction that she really was present, despite the way her eyes had looked up as she slipped away, as if she could—as the hospice nurse put it—see the dead waiting to receive her. A shocking silence descends the day after someone has died at home, as my mother did. Before the death,

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