I miss the Boughtons.
I am always a little bit sad when I finish a good piece of fiction. When I know my experience of getting to know the characters and what’s going on in their lives can’t go any further.
I remember feeling especially sad about finishing To Kill A Mockingbird last fall, about finishing Hannah Coulter each time I’ve read it (None other than Wendell Berry has ability enough to take me so far into the depth of humanity through fictional characters. Thank you, sir!), and last night, as I finished Home. It’s so odd; I actually miss the characters as though they’re real people who I know and love and relate to, who then leave.
And yet, strangely juxtaposed to my feelings of having to “end my relationship” with the characters, I feel that, because I was so wonderfully impacted by them, they will remain with me and I will remain changed by them for the rest of my life. And that’s not sad at all.
I sure do love photographs, but literature has a beauty and power all of it’s own.
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