A Death in the Family

James Agee, author of A Death in the Family said this in the book:

“ . . . nobody that ever lived is specially privileged; the axe can fall at any moment, on any neck, without any warning or any regard for justice. You've got to keep your mind off pitying your own rotten luck and setting up any kind of a howl about it . . . things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too.”  

It speaks to us now as we mourn a death in the family. One of JC's four piggies, Bruno, died last night from an unknown disease. 

Those of you who have pets know how it feels to lose one. In life, they become a part of us, of our family, bringing us so much joy. I prayed that God's grace may see Bruno out without pain. He struggled (or what seemed to human eyes as struggle) for an hour and then . . . gone.

Agee began writing “A Death in the Family” in 1948 and was not quite complete when he died in 1955.  That's a total of seven years to write an autobiographical novel that revolved around the death of the author's father.

It was edited and released posthumously two years later. The next year, the book received a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

This blog will not receive a prize of any kind and the author plans to release it immediately after writing the last sentence.

There is no attempt nor delusion to parallel that great novel with this teeny post. But the title seems fitting for both magnum opus and random focus. And so we move on, taking to heart what Agee wrote: 

“ . . . things as bad as this and a hell of a lot worse have happened to millions of people before and that they've come through it and that you will too.”