A Prayer For Owen Meany

by John Irving

When someone you love dies, and you’re not expecting it, you don’t lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time – the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes – when there’s a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she’s gone, forever – there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.

religion was only a career for Pastor Merrill. He taught the same old stories, with the same old cast of characters; he preached the same old virtues and values; and he theologized on the same old ‘miracles’ – yet he appeared not to believe in any of it. His mind was closed to the possibility of a new story; there was no room in his heart for a new character of God’s holy choosing, or for a new ‘miracle.’ Owen Meany had believed that his death was necessary if others were to be saved from a stupidity and hatred that was destroying him. In that belief, surely he was not so unfamiliar a hero.