My Selection — A Death in the Family
by James Agee
Yesterday, my thirty-five year old daughter entered our front door and headed to my arms. We were fully vaccinated and hadn’t touched each other for over a year. That touching her, her arms and back, her face and head, all mashed up against me, took me back to James Agee’s A Death in the Family. We were the lucky ones, celebrating that there had not been a death in the family. But that special touch — the one that breaks your heart — only Agee captures.
“Don’t you fret, Jay, don’t you fret. And before his time, before even he was dreamed of in this world, she must have lain under the hand of her mother or her father and they in their childhood under other hands, away on back through the mountains, away on back through the years, it took you right on back as far as you could ever imagine, right on back to Adam, only no one did it for him; or maybe God?
How far we all come. How far we all come away from ourselves. So far, so much between, you can never go home again. You can go home, it’s good to go home, but you never really get all the way home again in your life. …
Just one way, you do get back home. You have a boy or a girl of your own and now and then you remember and you know how they feel, and it’s almost the same as if you were your own self again, as you as you could remember. … whatever it was and however good it was, it wasn’t what you once had been, and had lost, and could never have again, and once in a while, once in a long time, you remember, and knew how far you were away, and it hit you hard enough, that little while it lasted, to break your heart.”
