The Pain of Being a Dad

A child had died for no reason the night before, sudden infant death, sindrum. He was a beautiful baby and his mother had asked me to baptize him. In my faith tradition, you're not supposed to baptize the dead, but then again, babies aren't supposed to die. The pain is maddening. I'm trying to start work on a new novel, but all i can write is a series of stories in which a young man tries increasingly extreme strategies for pulling out all his teeth. A baby's cries really are piercing. It feels as if they cut through you. Finally, unable to get him to stop crying, i put him in his car seat