Page 63

By Jack Joseph Smith

c 65 remember being taken into his:errie and eld’ weeden room, There were eld relatives with wrecked faces standing at the deorway and they parted from me as 1 passed’ threugh with my mother, He was lying in a large and heavy laced woeden carved'bed; The bed had a high back that threugh shadows across the other peeples faces standing areund him, but his face was so white with his - , hair that I could see his features shadow themselves before*I was near him It was like a starless night when yeu are leeking at an early moen the secend night after it is full’ witheut a cemplete efrcle ef distinctien and pale-with gray lines meving in the center of the coming darks. Once he had chased me because ef my mischief on a bright winter day dewn a trail that led inte the weeds that surreunded his hemes I wasn't afraid of him then). because everything that was: going on was so real fer him and for mes And I just ran and ran never really thinking abeut him catching me and only kmowing that I was-running and feeling the excitement that I wanted so strongly within me that he was-se much a part ef. And now I was net afraid loeking down at his whithering eyes and drawn chin and wrinkled ears: that loeked se big on the outside ae hel and blue vained heads. His dying was enly strange te me because he had already gone and his acceptance became the distance-that all were-se fearful of in the last mements when befere their eyes they were watching something they were unsure of jlmde was: led away after he had told me that Michael was alee his name and the great Michael'had been the ene whe had cenquered the devil and I sheuld always remember that and leek for the geed in my lifes In the frent reom under the dim red lit chandelier after a theusand peeple and moments had passed under and withim the many shaped grandfather clock above me, I heard im whispers: :

Original Scan

Page 63

AI Interpretation

GPT

Brought into the dying grandfather's room, the child sees a body already half gone and receives from him a final naming, linking Michael to the conqueror of the devil and to the search for good in life.

The scene is intimate and eerie rather than sentimental, with wood, lace, wrecked faces, and whitening flesh making death feel visible long before it is announced. Memory of being chased by the same grandfather on a bright day keeps the dying body tied to earlier vigor and mischief.

Claude

Grandfather Faolain dies in a laced, heavy wooden bed ringed by wrecked-faced relatives, his acceptance already the distance the others fear, passing Michael the name Michael and the charge to always look for the good.