This is the 16th day of the A to Z Blog Challenge, so today’s letter is “P.” I chose to write about a paragraph I liked in a novel I read, Prayers the Devil Answers, by Sharyn McCrumb. The following is in narrative form, as opposed to dialogue, and is from the point of view of Albert’s wife:

“Back when Albert was still awake, when I had no inkling of what was to come, I did not try to talk to him about anything other than how he felt and whether he wanted to eat or sleep. Later on I wished I had thought to ask him bigger questions, but that would have meant admitting to myself and to him that he was not coming back. As bad as I needed to know things, I could not have done that. Taken away his hope of surviving – I could not have done that.”

Albert in Prayers the Devil Answers was dying, but his wife could not bring herself to say anything to Albert that would make him know that he was dying.

That was the way I felt as my father was dying when I was 24 years old. No one that close to me had ever died. It was new territory for me. When I was a little older and wiser, I realized that he surely knew that death was near.

So many questions I never asked. So many things I left unsaid.

Until my next blog post

I hope you have a good book to read. (I finished reading In Order to Live:  A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, by Yeonmi Park, last night. I highly recommend it!)

If you are a writer, I hope you have productive writing time.

Janet