Summary

Can You Stay? – As the chapter begins, the author discusses the familiarity of grief and the grieving process, having gone through it once before – in relation to the death of his first wife and baby daughter. He also describes how his Catholic faith gave him comfort, and then how, on an earlier visit to Beau and his family (that is: sometime before Beau died, shortly after his initial diagnosis), he was asked “Can you stay, Dad?” (200). On that visit, he writes, Beau told him of his condition, and said that no matter what happened, he (Beau) was going to be okay. The author writes that he could see that even then, Beau was preparing for the possibility of his death. Meanwhile, he writes that during that conversation, Beau also made him promise that no matter what happened, he (the author) was going to do...