The Wren in the House
Lindsey Graham is dead, and I don’t know what to do with that.
A note from Lawrence
I woke to a ransacked apartment, two cats in full predator mode, and a house wren that had come down the chimney overnight and survived until morning behind my bookcase. In old folklore, a bird in the house is a death omen, and a wren, the little king of the birds, foretells the death of a king. Then my phone lit up: Lindsey Graham had died overnight.
In the fable, the wren becomes king of the birds by hiding in the eagle’s feathers and fluttering out at the top. Graham spent forty years in the feathers of raptors, first John McCain and then a much bigger, much worse bird. I’ve tried all day to feel something clean about his death. This essay is about why I can’t.
