Some of you unfortunately probably
know that people living with AIDS often
come very close to death and then get better
and get up and go to the movies again.
And that happened to Johnny.
He actually had one of those near-death experiences.
Well, it wasn't even a near-death.
He died and came back.
So and this poem's about that.
There's two allusions.
One is to Mary and Martha, remember
them, sisters of Lazarus?
You all remember.
Lazarus was as a pal of Jesus and when he became sick,
Jesus was out preaching and the sisters sent for him.
And he said, essentially I'll be there in a few days,
and Lazarus died.
So he showed up and the sisters, you can imagine,
were a little annoyed with him.
And one of the quotes in here is a statement
from the stories that's recorded in the Bible.
And the second allusion is to this theory in new physics
called Schrödinger's cat.
And I'm sure there's someone in this room who
can describe it better than me.
But essentially it challenges our old idea of reality.
We used to think that reality was there like you guys,
and we could close our eyes and it would still be there.
It was objective, I guess we used to think.
And this theory was this guy put a cat in a box
and with a little vial of radiation or something.
And the old theory of reality was the cat either nibbled
at the radiation and died or didn't.
The new theory is the cat isn't dead until you see it's dead.
But our perception creates reality, of course,
the cat probably feels differently about that.
But I was reading this at the time.
So for three days.
For three days now, I've been trying to think of another word
for gratitude because my brother could have died and didn't.
Because for a week, we stood in the intensive care unit
trying not to imagine how it would be then afterwards.
My youngest brother Andy said, this is so weird.
I don't know if I'll be talking with John today or buying a pair
of pants for his funeral.
And I hated him for saying it, because it was true and seemed
to tilt it, because I had been writing
his elegy in my head during the seven hour drive there
and trying not to.
Thinking meant not thinking.
It meant imagining my brother surrounded by light like
Schrödinger's cat that would be dead if you looked and might
live if you didn't.
And then it got better, and then it got worse.
And it's a story now.
He came back.
And I did by that time imagine him dead.
And I did begin to write the other story how
the crowd in the stifling church snapped to a tearful attention,
how my brother lived again for a few minutes through me.
And although I know I couldn't help it
because fear has its own language and its own story,
because even grief provides a living remedy,
I can't help but think of that woman who
said to him whom she considered her savior:
If thou had been here, my brother had not died.
How she might have practiced her speech,
and how she too might have stood trembling,
unable to meet the eyes of the dear familiar figure that
stumbled from the cave when the compassionate fist of God opened
and crushed her with gratitude and shame.