Introduction

After my father died, I thought I'd escaped the pain through nihilism. In that emptiness, God found me,. by Esther Maria Magnus. This article is excerpted from With or Without Me, a memoir of losing and finding. It's Easter, one year after Dad's death. Not exactly one year to the day, actually, but he died the morning of Easter Sunday. And now it's the same exact time, the hour ofDad's death. The congregation is singing, Christ is a Risen, and I'm fighting the urge to throw up because I'm beyond drunk. Everything around me is spinning. As I exhale through my nose, I smell the vodka I was