“Summoned by the head nod of a priest who never stopped smiling in a gentle, divine, ace-up-his-sleeve way, Finn now stood mechanically and went to the front of the church. He cleared his throat as if he were in a school play. At least there was no PowerPoint. From the front of the sanctuary he read some psalm or other that sounded like an unconsoling battle cry. Yet just the doing of something, anything, ceremonial in nature mildly soothed him.

Then Finn closed the good book. He spoke of brotherhood, its failings and its tendernesses. He spoke of how Max had been arbitrarily ostracized and taunted and shoved around as a boy, and how Finn, three years younger, had watched it from a distant corner of a hallway or the school yard, in fear and embarrassment, and pretended he didn’t even know Max. Finn, a coward, had kept his gaze down, receded, turned his back on Max repeatedly. Perhaps to spare Max the humiliation of knowing his little brother could see all this? But no: it was Finn’s own craven vulnerability, shameful shame. He was in countless ways unworthy of Max and his beautiful stoicism. Max’s self-designed cool life management system was unpatentable. Max’s devotion to the whole enterprise of living even when it didn’t meet him halfway. Max’s refusal to whine. Max’s bursts of compassion for others when he should have, could have, saved all his reserves of compassion for himself. Max suffered terribly but calmly and with complicated knowledge. He was a beautiful brother and although perhaps there were many things the two of them should have said and didn’t, should have done but didn’t, probably that was the case between all people. He had not been at Max’s deathbed. And yet he felt in a way that he had been. He had felt Max depart at his very moment of departure. The mind-meld of brothers had kept them connected. Sometimes when people died it was the vanishing that was so hard. But Max had not really vanished. That would be impossible. There was a growing slur in Finn’s words as if he were drunk or deaf or having a mild stroke. He looked out at the congregation and saw some worried faces. He knew then that he sounded insane to absolutely everyone.”