On Reading John L'Heureux's Three Short Moments in a Long Life

He dies at the end. He looks the camera in the eye, squeezes his beloved's hand and exits the page like gravity-proof fairy dust. Except that he is, even in that very last moment, the force of gravity itself. He is, from the moment he appears as a playground voyeur, weighty and broken and magical.  He is the Spy, the Writer, the Other: He Who Misses The Moment and records it better than he could have lived it.

And you do not love him. You cringe. You feel yourself in his unsettled skin, which becomes known to you softly, in doses so minute you can barely feel them. The narrator is that kid who climbs into the window seat next to you on the bus and falls asleep in the full sun. The one you watch soften and slump, his face turned unconsciously toward you, so that you can see the freckles beginning to form, the mole that will travel with him, a passenger and a tell that he may never notice, but you have, and in doing so you feel enriched and clever and prying. But you do not feel dirty until sweat forms and his bangs get damp and he begins to twitch in those tiny harmless spasms of deep sleep. And still, you do not look away.

In an interview in the magazine that published his story, L'Heureux comments, "I find even horrible people to be redeemable once I begin writing about them." But I do not forgive myself after reading his story.  I could not sleep. I could not forgive myself for lacking the rigor to create something so beautiful, writing and rewriting as he must have done so many times to create something flawless and clean and simple and human.  I wondered if I, too, would fail to recognize Jesus as a homeless veteran then run out to find him gone.

In the end, the narrator squeezes his wife's hand 3 times. To this reader, it is a recognition of love, and therefore a birth. But not the writer, who was a Jesuit priest, who is, like all of us, an other. He lives. He makes me wonder anew how many moments do we have? And which ones should we choose to let the sun warm?