Wisdom Of The Week

Michael Hainey's new book After Visiting Friends: A Son's Story is about his quest to find the secret behind his father's puzzling and unexpected death at age 35. I haven't read this book yet but some great insights....

• If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
• It is the dead, not the living, who make the longest demands.
• The past gives you no justice. Sentences are passed. But that doesn't mean you get justice. You can stand there forever and rail and say, 'Someone has to pay. I want what was taken from me.' But you're just going to get silence coming back at you. The past doesn't pay. We pay. And we're all free to decide when we've had enough.
• Fear is the trick of the enemy. And your enemy comes in many robes. But he has only one face. You know his face. You've seen it many times. You need not fear it. In your heart, you know you will triumph and you will defeat your enemy with the one weapon that you have inside you that he cannot touch--truth.
• Life, I learned then, belongs not to the just but to those who do whatever they must do in order to maintain their vision of reality.
• I learned early that sometimes you have to dig through garbage to get anywhere.
• How his death hung over that house. It’s part of what I know to be true—your absence is greater than your presence.
• The dead man. I envy him. I want his power. The power, years later, that you have over someone. Still. Your absence is greater than your presence. Presence is fleeting. Presence is easy. But absence? That's eternal.