[caption id=attachment_66400 align=aligncenter width=1024] Figure 1. Chris Crowe delivering the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecture in the Marriott Center on May 25, 2021. All screen captures from the forum assembly courtesy BYUtv.[/caption]

[caption id=attachment_66396 align=alignright width=199] Figure 2. Dan Flavin, untitled (corner piece), 2011, Tate Museum, Liverpool, England. Photograph by Chris Crowe.[/caption]

I hope you’ll forgive my blatant display of ignorance, but I’m going to begin today by discussing something I know very little about, then I’ll move on to a topic I’m relatively familiar with, and I’ll conclude my part of the forum by showing how these experiences, ideas, and movements have influenced—and continue to influence—my own writing.

I’ve learned most of what I know about art, especially contemporary art, from the time I’ve spent with my wife, Elizabeth (an accomplished artist herself, with BFA and MFA degrees), walking through museums in the United States and Europe. Over the years, she’s been patient with my lowbrow, traditional view of “art,” and she’s helped me see—and appreciate—the beauty and complexity of most contemporary art. But I have to admit that despite her guidance, I still have a lot to learn.

Here are three brief examples:

[caption id=attachment_66397 align=alignright width=179] Figure 3. Félix González-Torres, “Untitled” (Portrait of Ross in L.A.), candies in variously colored wrappers, endless supply, ©Félix González-Torres. Photograph by Chris Crowe at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2017.[/caption]

In 2011, we spent a day in Liverpool, England, where we toured several museums. One piece I saw in the Tate Museum that day remains especially memorable. It was an untitled work by Dan Flavin, an artist who was, not surprisingly, unfamiliar to me. Elizabeth recognized it immediately (fig. 2), but I was baffled.

How is this a work of art?

A few years later, as we strolled through the Art Institute of Chicago, we came upon this art installation (fig. 3). The free candy immediately appealed to me, but, despite my wife’s artistic contextualization and explanation, I couldn’t accept a pile of candy as a work of art.

And not long ago, we visited the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., and entered a room where a contraption in the ceiling dropped a piece of white paper every few seconds (fig. 4). This was, I knew, some kind of art—we were in an art museum, after all—but I didn’t have the background knowledge to appreciate it for what it was.

[caption id=attachment_66398 align=aligncenter width=1024] Figure 4. Ann Hamilton, at hand, 2001, reinstalled at the Hirshhorn Museum of Art, Baltimore, 2017–20. Photograph by Chris Crowe in Washington, D.C., 2011.[/caption]

Clearly, to me, anyway, art ain’t what it used to be.

When it comes to art, I acknowledge my ignorance, and I understand, sort of, why contemporary, conceptual art often leaves me flat-footed: most of it lacks the defining characteristics, the traditional traits I must have learned somewhere along the way, of what makes art art.

But here’s the thing: when I think about my various encounters with what I call nontraditional contemporary art, I have to admit that the three works I just shared with you have generated more thought, discussion, and interest than all the paintings and sculptures I speed-walked past in the world-famous Louvre Museum combined.

My art-appreciation quandary can be explained in a number of ways, but I’d like to explore how my understanding of genre might influence my ability to broaden my understanding of contemporary visual and other forms of art.

Genre for a particular thing can be explained as the commonly accepted essential characteristics of that thing. For example, if I ask you to imagine a pencil, you’ll very likely envision an image that’s similar to what I have in mind: a yellow wooden instrument that’s around seven inches long, with a pink eraser on one end and a graphite tip on the other.

Consider now a box of facial tissue. But how do you know it’s a tissue box? What are its defining characteristics?

It has tissue, you say, and it’s a box, and it has a label or brand on its side.

If I remove the last tissue, is it still a tissue box?

Well, it may not hold a tissue, but it has the characteristics of a box of tissue. It has a label on the front, a slot for dispensing tissues, it’s made out of thin cardboard, and so on.

But what if I break the box apart? What is it now? How do you know?

What if I flatten it? Is it still a tissue box? At what point does it cease to be a tissue box?

Like a box of facial tissues, most things have defining characteristics, qualities that, especially in writing and literature, help us define or classify things according to a genre. We recognize most works by their defining, generally accepted traits. And while it’s nice to know something about genre and what it defines, as a writer I’ve learned that an understanding of genre can also help artists create or make or perform things: a painting, a poem, a polka, or a prelude, for example.

Important as they are to our understanding of what makes something something, these traits are not usually static. In large or small ways, they often change and evolve over time, and in some cases (like those three works of art I shared with you), they may have almost none of the defining qualities that would have been expected a century—or even a decade—earlier.

Even something as traditional as a Brigham Young University devotional has changed over time. For decades, the speakers stood behind a pulpit and read from notes; sometime later, they read from teleprompters. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, the format began to include visuals, usually photographs, but then more elaborate graphics and even video. More recently, the speakers have moved off the rostrum to stand on a round stage with images projected directly behind them. We still recognize the gathering as a devotional, and we could quickly, if we wanted to, make a list of essential qualities that define this kind of BYU assembly despite the recent changes it’s undergone.

In the last couple of decades, my area of study, young adult literature, has undergone significant, interesting, and exciting genre changes. The traditional work of fiction, what we’ve always called “novels,” has been the centerpiece of YA literature for more than a century. Novels were clearly defined as extended prose narratives, works of fiction that told stories using settings, characters, and dialogue to create a plot for readers to enjoy. Novels had a reliable set of rules, genre traits that readers, writers, and publishers accepted and expected.

But as the twentieth century drew to a close, the YA novel began to change. I don’t have time to go into a lot of detail here, but let me give some examples to give you a quick rundown: Bull Run had not one or two but sixteen narrators. Maus, a long comic book/memoir, was called a graphic novel. Make Lemonade was written in articulated lines, not prose paragraphs, and then Out of the Dust was composed as a long series of free-verse poems. Whirligig blended time, setting, and characters, seemingly at random. Likewise, instead of a singular, unified plot, Holes had three distinct story strands, each from a different point in time. Monster blended genre—prose, screenplay, and illustration—to tell a single story. In the days before texting, TTYL was a novel composed entirely in chat-room instant messages. The Invention of Hugo Cabret was a hybrid novel: half traditional prose and half wordless illustration. And then The Arrival was a novel composed entirely of illustrations—and no words!

And these are only the tip of the literary iceberg.

Nowadays, it appears that traditional genre rules no longer apply, and trying to contain the creative evolution of YA literature is like trying to draw boundaries on water. The traits are fluid and ever-evolving, and sometimes it seems that as soon as someone redefines what a YA novel is or must be, some author takes that as a challenge to write a book that blurs or obliterates those boundaries.

As a teacher and as a writer, I’ve followed this evolution of the novel form with great interest, and as a writer who most of the time has no idea of what he’s doing, I’m always on the lookout for an approach or a method that will make novel writing easier. And I have to admit that the student in me often wonders, “Exactly how long does a novel have to be?” or, in other words, “What’s the shortest acceptable form that will still count as a novel?”

Let me illustrate how genre evolution has influenced my writing by telling you about my most recently published novel (I’ve written several since this one, but they remain—probably with good reason—unpublished).

I like writing historical fiction because it allows me to blend the creative pleasure of writing fiction with the intellectual pleasure of exploring history. A few years ago, I decided I wanted to write a novel set in the 1960s, a complex, turbulent decade in American history, and after researching the ’60s, I decided to settle on 1968, a year packed with civil unrest, political turmoil, and heartbreaking assassinations, all taking place while the steady static of the Vietnam War thrummed in the background. I learned that ’68 was a turning point in the war for several reasons, not the least of which was the staggering death count. More American soldiers died in Vietnam that year than in all the previous years combined.

In a manner similar to the daily COVID case counts we currently receive, in 1968, newspapers reported the war casualties every Thursday. That year, 16,592 U.S. soldiers died in Vietnam.

When I had finished my research, I started writing the story of a seventeen-year-old boy dealing with conflict at home complicated by the specter of Vietnam. I wanted this young man, a kid who would soon be draft bait, to be forced to confront all kinds of crises and ultimately have to sacrifice for someone he loved more than he loved himself.

With all this in my head, I pounded out a first page, then a chapter, then another chapter, but as the novel grew, so did my sense of despair. My story was boring!

That’s a terrifying revelation for a writer, and it’s also a sign that the book has some undiagnosed fatal flaw.

Knowing that first drafts are usually flush with fatal flaws, I pushed ahead, but as the pages piled up, so did the boredom, and I knew that if I couldn’t fix whatever was wrong, I’d have to dump the entire project.

I woke up early one morning, stewing about this stupid book and what I could do to save it. One of the few things I liked about it was the odd appearance of the number 17. My main character was a seventeen-year-old born on May 17. His father had played college football and had worn the number 17. I liked how that prime number had worked its way into my story, and I wondered if seventeen might somehow be the key to fixing my novel.

But how?

Well, maybe I could divide the book into seventeen sections. Or maybe the story could be told from seventeen different perspectives.

What else? Haiku have seventeen syllables: five in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third. Could I use that? Maybe a haiku epigraph could head each chapter, or maybe the main character could write haiku messages to his girlfriend, or maybe . . . this was going nowhere. Thinking about numbers usually isn’t a way to solve a novel problem.

But then, in my desperation, I wondered, was 1968 divisible by 17? Turns out it wasn’t, but even if it had been, what could I have done with that?

What else?

The death count: 16,592. Was that divisible by 17?

Turns out it was: 16,592 divided by 17 was 976!

Nice coincidence, but how does that help me revive a dying manuscript?

After a bit more stewing, I decided to start over and to write a novel contained by a syllable count of 16,592, one syllable for every American soldier who died in 1968.

I had no confidence that it would work: with fewer than seventeen thousand syllables to work with, I’d have to leave out so much novel-ish detail that my book might fail simply because its many gaps would make it impossible for it to feel or read like a novel.

Let me read you the first page so you can see what I came up with:

There’s something tidy in seventeen syllables, a haiku neatness
that leaves craters of meaning between the lines but still communicates
what matters most. I don’t have the time or the space to write more, so I’ll
write what needs to be remembered and leave it to you to fill in the
gaps if you feel like it. In 1968, sixteen thousand five
hundred ninety-two American soldiers died in Vietnam, and
I’m dedicating one syllable to each soul as I record my
own losses suffered in 1968, a year like no other.

The challenge of writing and revising an entire novel in 976 haiku stanzas breathed life into my dead manuscript, and eventually it turned out that at least one publisher considered it a “novel.”

So how did all the strange modern art, the thinking about what makes a tissue box a tissue box, and those unusual YA novels influence me? Well, if I hadn’t already been familiar with all the genre-bending, boundary-blurring artistic work that came before, I couldn’t possibly have conceived of something like this weird little haiku novel.

My current book project is a cousin to my haiku novel. After learning so much about the Vietnam War era, I wanted to write another novel, one that explores how the tragedy of a young man declared MIA, missing in action, affects not just his family but his entire community. And I wanted to figure out a way to have the Vietnam draft lottery play a role in the story.

I also wanted to write this novel in a nontraditional format; I wondered how many genre traits I could leave out of a novel and still have it be a novel.

Could I write a story that approximated an impressionist painting? Could I use broad, vague brush strokes that omit essential, traditional elements of a novel? Could I trust my readers to fill in the gaps? Could I ignore chronology? Could I write a story where the main character, the young man who would eventually be declared MIA, never appears, is never even named?

While I was poking around for a method to this project’s madness, I read a novelly kind of book published in 1915, Edgar Lee Masters’s Spoon River Anthology. That book got me thinking that maybe I could write my novel in the form of free-verse poems written/spoken by family members and friends left behind by this MIA soldier.

And because I was already appropriating one American classic, I decided that I might as well make it two, so I also used the title and character names from Shirley Jackson’s 1948 short story, “The Lottery,” in my story.

This project is far from complete. My current draft has about 115 poems from 30 different characters, and despite its current lack of polish, I like how it’s shaping up.

[caption id=attachment_66399 align=aligncenter width=768] Figure 5. Chris Crowe and former students who read the roles from his novel The Lottery during the forum. Photograph by Laura Holt.[/caption]

I’ll conclude my lecture by sharing with you a brief excerpt from this novel experiment, but rather than read it myself, I’ve enlisted the support of nine kindhearted former students (fig. 5), who will read the roles of nine characters from Lottery. As you watch and listen, I invite you to think about genre and your expectations of what a novel must be and how boundaries can be bent, and most of all, I ask you to consider Dan Flavin’s lightbulb in a corner to see if it sheds any light on the potential of my work-in-progress to one day be some sort of novel.

Thank you for being such a kind audience.

Now, on to Lottery.

[caption id=attachment_66405 align=aligncenter width=1024] Chris Crowe[/caption]

December 4 “wins” first place in draft for 1972

Washington, August 6, 1971

Men born on December 4, 1952, will be first in line next year for the draft.

That was the luck of the draw yesterday as Selective Service pulled capsules from two plastic drums to determine the order in which men will be drafted in 1972.

[caption id=attachment_66404 align=aligncenter width=1024] Katie Irion[/caption]

Mrs. Hutchinson Tempe, AZ December 4, 1952

This baby, tiny, red, and soft, snuggles like he’s still part of me. He looks so fragile, and I’m learning to hold him properly, but I’m terrified I might hurt him, and despite the painful delivery I just endured, right now, I would suffer anything to keep him safe all his days.

[caption id=attachment_66406 align=aligncenter width=1024] Washington Pearce[/caption]

Brad Downing

We were born on the same day, he and I, and I’m older by a few hours. We joked that I’m his big brother even though he’s almost a foot taller than I am. He was the new kid, and we rode the same bus to McKemy Jr. High every morning. He was tall and skinny back then— and awkward.

“I’m Brad,” I told him when we shared the sidewalk waiting for the bus that hot August morning. He said he was from California. His dad worked in Phoenix. He had a younger brother and a sister. He’d never been in Arizona before. What he didn’t say, but what I could tell, was this: he was scared to death.

[caption id=attachment_66407 align=aligncenter width=1024] Madelynn Jones[/caption]

Twyla

that boy he didn’t tease me like the others did he was kind to me

sometimes they said he loved me and wanted me to be his girlfriend but

they were liars kind does not mean love it means nice and he was nice to

me sometimes he shoved boys who were teasing me he said DONT LISTEN TO

THEM TWYLA and DONT CRY TWYLA IT WILL BE ALL RIGHT i liked seeing

him in high school but now i dont know where he is i really miss him

[caption id=attachment_66408 align=aligncenter width=1024] Jeremy Holbrook[/caption]

Davy Hutchinson

Every time my brother touches the ball, the crowd’s roar surges into a wave that crashes through the stadium. He breaks through tacklers like they’re wooden puppets.

Watching from the bleachers, I bask in his reflected glory, proud to be the freshman brother to the guy everyone knows, loves, and cheers for.

[caption id=attachment_66409 align=aligncenter width=1024] Ellie Smith[/caption]

Heather Bentham

My heart pounded when I snuck into school in the early-morning dark. I felt like a thief, petrified that someone would catch me in the act, but all was quiet in the dim light of the hallways. I didn’t need much light to find my way to his locker. For months, I’ve watched him from a distance, cloaked in my shyness and overwhelmed with love for a boy who doesn’t know I exist. Looking both ways, I quickly taped a birthday card to his locker and darted out of the building.

[caption id=attachment_66410 align=aligncenter width=1024] Washington Pearce[/caption]

Brad Downing

Mrs. Horner is talking about Spoon River Anthology again today, but this time she’s brought in a record player and we’re listening to people reading poems. The voices are way too somber for me, so I start word-doodling:

draft: a light breeze

draft: a first attempt

draft: a cup or a drink

draft: a vacuum that sucks guys into war

[caption id=attachment_66411 align=aligncenter width=1024] Amy Banks[/caption]

Elizabeth Lane

In English today, we read a short story that Ms. Gorrell says is a modern American classic. Everybody in the village, including a cranky old man, shows up for this annual ritual where each family has one person pull a piece of paper from a shabby black box, and the person who gets the black spot has to have everyone in his family draw, even the kids.

A man ends up with the black spot, and his wife starts whining: “It wasn’t fair.” But the family has to draw, all five of them, and the mom gets the black spot. The story ends with her getting stoned while crying out “It isn’t fair, it isn’t right.”

In this weird lottery, the “winner” was actually the loser.

[caption id=attachment_66412 align=aligncenter width=1024] Jon Ostenson[/caption]

Mr. Hutchinson

After Pearl Harbor, we didn’t think, we just enlisted, swept up in the call to serve our country, and before I knew it, I was on a Navy ship in the middle of the South Pacific. I saw tropical storms, burning ships, and POW camps in the Philippines, and none of it felt heroic.

It felt tragic and painful. I decided, though, that, whatever it cost, this war was worth it to guarantee that my sons would never have to do what I had to do.

[caption id=attachment_66413 align=aligncenter width=1024] Amy Banks[/caption]

Elizabeth Lane

Guess what? That cute boy from my sophomore English class, the one who used to torment me until I cried? I asked him to the Sadie Hawkins dance— and he said yes. I feel like I won the lottery!

[caption id=attachment_66414 align=aligncenter width=1024] Katie Irion[/caption]

Mrs. Hutchinson

I always knew my oldest boy was an athlete. He never tired of playing, throwing or running, and when he was playing he never felt fear or pain. I can’t tell you how many scraped knees and bloody noses he came home with over the years, always oblivious to how he’d been injured.

I’ll never forget the first time I watched him carried off a football field. Freshman year. Some dirty brute rammed him, helmet to helmet. I lost my breath as if I’d been the one hit, and I saw my son, motionless on the field. Coaches and trainers ran to his side and someone signaled for a stretcher. By the time they loaded him onto it he was moving, and somehow I was able to breathe again, and soon he was sitting up and talking to the trainer and then standing up and telling the coach to let him back in the game. Thank God the coach sent him back to the bench where he sat and pouted until the game was over.

But the images of my poor boy flat on the field and being carried off on a stretcher, they haunt me still.

[caption id=attachment_66415 align=aligncenter width=1024] Amy Banks[/caption]

Elizabeth Lane

I used to hate him, you know. He teased and tormented me endlessly in our sophomore English class. Some days my tears spilled over before I could escape into the hallway, but a year later, he changed, grew into his body, I guess, but in the right way. Less foolish, more kind. And I saw in him a sensitivity that had been hidden beneath his stupid sophomore veneer.

He had always been easy to look at, but somehow he also became easy to love.

[caption id=attachment_66417 align=aligncenter width=1024] Ellie Smith[/caption]

Heather Bentham

In English class, Ms. Smith said that unrequited love makes powerful stories. Writers know that readers understand love and longing and the painful knowledge that despite your love, all your love, it will never be consummated. It’s like being hungry all the time while being surrounded by, tempted by, lured by delicious food, knowing you’ll never be able to take even one bite.

[caption id=attachment_66418 align=aligncenter width=1024] Jeremy Holbrook[/caption]

Davy Hutchinson

I forgot what day it was when he and I sat down to watch the 10 o’clock news. The news anchor talked while the screen showed some old men fiddling around with a couple big plastic drums and a few stone-faced kids stood around. The camera panned the audience, and it was kids and old people, talking, some even laughing. He said it reminded him of a weird short story.

“The first men born in 1952 to be drafted,” said the anchorman, “will be those born on December 4.” and I said, “Hey, that’s your birthday!” At first, he didn’t say anything. Then, staring at the TV, he whispered,

[caption id=attachment_66419 align=aligncenter width=1024] Jon Ostenson[/caption]

Mr. Hutchinson

When he left, I wept. Not that he saw, I made sure of that, but watching him get on that bus tore my heart.

Now I understand why my mother cried when I went away to war, and why my father seemed so distant. The young soldier that was me looked ahead with faith in the system, in the cause, and with a bit of patriotism. I’m proud my boy has that, but he’s also got naivete.

He’ll find out too soon why they say war is hell, and I weep not just for his loss of innocence, but for the real risk of losing him for good.

[caption id=attachment_66420 align=aligncenter width=1024] Hale Croft[/caption]

Private Zanini

He’s just like all the rest of us boot camp grunts: shaved head, weary eyes, baggy fatigues, but the one thing weird about this guy is that every night, he slides out of his bunk when he thinks everyone’s asleep and kneels on the floor next to his bed whispering who-knows-what to God.

[caption id=attachment_66421 align=aligncenter width=1024] Rebecca Cazanave[/caption]

Nguyen Phuong Vietnam

I do not like Americans. They treat me like a slave just because I work in the chow hall and do laundry.

They call me ugly names, and they leave a big mess. I cannot complain because my family needs the money.

Most of the GIs think I am a slut, but I am not, and they think I do not understand English, but I do, and they think I am not human, but I am.

[caption id=attachment_66422 align=aligncenter width=1024] Hale Croft[/caption]

Private Zanini Vietnam

We agreed that Death feels like a roommate, and you know you talk about it and think about it way too much. It lingers like a sticky shadow, stalking you around the clock. And you can’t help wondering, “Will I know when it’s coming? Will I hear the footsteps of Death?”

Some guys believe in premonitions, that Death tips His hand before you cash in, but I gotta tell you, we’ve got a permanent premonition. On patrol or on our bunks, we know we’re just a bullet or a chunk of shrapnel away from The End.

Maybe being a pessimist is a stupid kind of defense mechanism, but at least that way we won’t be surprised.

[caption id=attachment_66423 align=aligncenter width=1024] Rebecca Cazanave[/caption]

Nguyen Phuong Vietnam

The first time I saw that GI he smiled at me, but not like other GIs smiled. They smiled at me like they were hungry and I was the meal.

Sometimes when I cleaned up in the chow hall after he’d eaten he would thank me.

Once he gave me a flower. That made me turn red especially when all the other soldiers whistled and yelled. But he made them shut up.

One time he asked me about my family. I could not answer only cry. He said sorry and wiped away his own tears.

[caption id=attachment_66424 align=aligncenter width=1024] Hale Croft[/caption]

Private Zanini Vietnam

Foxhole fever strikes when you’re dug in, waiting for a firefight to start. The damp jungle heat makes you sweat; the machine-gun fire and mortar shells make you shiver. The cure? Daylight and the all-clear signal.

[caption id=attachment_66425 align=aligncenter width=1024] Katie Irion[/caption]

Mrs. Hutchinson

“The Secretary of the Army has asked us to express his deep regret that your son has been reported missing in action in Vietnam since 12 November 1973. He was last seen while on a combat operation when a hostile force was encountered.”

That telegram was only the beginning of our grief. Days, weeks, months of waiting for news. Was my poor boy dead? Worry gnawed me like a cancer, and in time I realized his fate might be something worse than death. What’s worse than death?

Missing in Action.

[caption id=attachment_66430 align=aligncenter width=1024] Amy Banks[/caption]

Elizabeth Lane

missing in action missing in action missing in action missing

in action missing in action missing in act ion missing in act

ion missing in act ion missing in action miss ing in action miss

ing in action miss ing in action missing in action missing in

action missing in action missing in action missing in action

[caption id=attachment_66427 align=aligncenter width=1024] Jeremy Holbrook[/caption]

Davy Hutchinson

I never minded living in his shadow. But now, now that shadow is longer and darker.

[caption id=attachment_66428 align=aligncenter width=1024] Washington Pearce[/caption]

Brad Downing

If you had asked me who, of all the guys who went to ’Nam, was the most likely to return a war hero, I would have said him. And I would be half right. He 100% is a war hero, but he has not returned.

[caption id=attachment_66429 align=aligncenter width=1024] Katie Irion[/caption]

Mrs. Hutchinson

Sometimes, I just stand in his room. His trophies and plaques and photos and posters fill the shelves and walls. His civilian clothes still hang in his closet. His stereo still has a Credence Clearwater Revival record on the turntable.

Sometimes, I enter his room in the morning, watching the sunlight filter through the curtains, and I’ll sit on his bed and turn on his radio to listen to his favorite station, the same station he listened to every morning for years as he got ready for school.

Sometimes, I stand in his room awash with memories of my dear sweet boy and cry and cry and cry for him.

[caption id=attachment_66434 align=aligncenter width=1024] Madelynn Jones[/caption]

Twyla

sometimes at night i remember him from school days and it makes me real

sad so i look at his picture in my yearbook sometimes and i cry

a little i wish i knew where he went i wish he would come back home

[caption id=attachment_66435 align=aligncenter width=1024] Amy Banks[/caption]

Elizabeth Lane Washington, DC

I brought my children, grown now, to DC to see the sights. The city overflows with history, museums, and monuments, and we saw them all.

On our last day on the Mall, we made our way to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. Walking downhill, seeing the wall of names rise higher, I felt a growing sadness, a sense of loss long buried but hardly forgotten.

One of my daughters noticed my pace had slowed, touched my elbow, and moved on, leaving me alone to search for his name.

It had been more than 40 years, and my life had gone its own way. I’d had real joy and real sorrow in those decades, but I was not prepared for the emotion that swamped me when I saw his name and ran my fingers over the letters carved in black granite. All the grief flooded back, fresh and sudden, as I leaned against the wall silently sobbing over his loss—and mine.

Chris Crowe

BYU Studies Publications