Shall a man be more pure than his maker? Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly: how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is dust, which are crushed before the moth? They are destroyed from morning to evening: they perish for ever without regarding it. Doth not their excellency which is in them go away? They die, even without wisdom. —JOB 4:16 – 21 HER SURGEON HAD explained this procedure would take five hours—one to make the incision and remove the lamina, another to extract the disk, three more to position the bone grafts, fasten the vertebrae with pins and screws. When Kathy began to awaken, struggle against the blur of vision and sound, she saw white brilliance and a ring of figures brightly clothed, supposing, at the age of fifty-one, she’d expired on the operating table and ascended to her reward. Warmth overcame her and then elation, an assurance, as in those hymns she sang in church, that there was indeed a celestial paradise, and her voice, unparalleled in the congregations of Oklahoma, would attain its chosen place.
