Shit. My mind’s blank. How can I forget this prayer? For years of my life I spent once a week, every week, jammed in a tiny, claustrophobic classroom systematically reciting it with fake plastic rosary beads. Sometimes we would take turns saying it out loud, and despite the insufferable dry heat of old furnaces and stiff wooden desks, my voice always resounded with power and conviction. Now I couldn’t think of the second line.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come thy will be done, Earth as it is in heaven.

No, no, no, that’s totally wrong. Come on Jill, you can do this. Just focus on the music, that’ll get you through.

I breathe in deeply, my chest quivering as the lungs fill with oxygen.

From somewhere off to the side, soothing tones of a church organ resonate. At this point, it’s the only aspect of the moment that feels real, the only thing that connects me from wherever I am back down to Earth. I listen to the rising crescendos and falling diminuendos, and try to concentrate on the flow of the melody.

I recognize this song. He burned me this album, one summer day. He told me Norah Jones was going to be famous, and that I better watch out for her. I never knew how he could always predict the next household name in mainstream pop, but somehow he managed to scout new talent before most major record labels.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee. Blessed…thou…is?

Motherfucker. Why, in the one time in my life that I need any kind of spiritual intervention at all, is our Lord, the savior, not responding to me? Not even to let me communicate with his virgin mother?

I feel a pat on my shoulder. I look up; it’s our next door neighbor. And then, all of a sudden, it’s summer. It’s one of those cool, breezy nights we spent playing in our backyards. We would play hide and go seek, the kind where you couldn’t go in the woods and when someone screamed “BASE!” everyone had to run back to the designated swing set to reconvene for whatever matter required the players’ immediate attention (usually bedtime).

The best part of the whole game, though, was that my brother was the oldest, and had the most cunning hiding skills out of any hide-and-go-seeker, ever. While every other brother and sister fought, mine taught me his ways, and didn’t mind when I admiringly followed him around, watching his every move with my big brown eyes. He would even spend his paper route money to buy me candy, so I’d have something to do in those long, treacherous minutes in silent hiding.

I start shivering, and grasp the packet of tissues someone handed to me for dear life.

I look to the right, and there are my parents. They always put the fear of God into us, yet we avenged them by being little rascals at any chance possible. Like the time we waged a war with our mom’s decorative pine cone collection. He sought cover behind the big gray couch, but I stayed on the front lines flinging pine cones with every inch of my four foot body. Pine cones turned into pillows, pillows turned into couch cushions, and soon any item in our living room not bolted to the ground was flying through the air. Until CRASH came a ceramic horse, splitting the poor equine right through his abdomen.

Every sibling rivalry in the world results in broken valuables, but I cannot think of any older brother who could turn such a panicked situation into, well, fun. While I racked my brain with every punishment imaginable, he started singing the Rolling Stones “Wild Horses.” In fact, he found the song in our Dad’s CD collection, and played it on repeat the whole time he glued that stupid thing back together, ranting about how he was glad it broke since it obstructed the TV when you laid down on the couch. To this day, I still burst out laughing every time I hear Mick Jagger swooning, “Wild horses, couldn’t drag me away…”

Jill, no. Concentrate. If you want to get up and speak, you’re going to have to remain coherent.

I wonder what he’d think of the little speech I wrote. I remember an email he sent me where he compared me to my favorite New York Times columnist. I was so flattered that he remembered she was my favorite, but then again, the reason I had ever even heard of her was because he bought me one of her bestselling novels (before any talk show host had any mention of it, naturally). He told me that he could see me with a career like hers, in one of the most heartfelt and sincere emails that felt more like a sacred bond than a virtual letter. If only I had known it would be his last—

Holy Mary, pray for our sinners, now and at the hour of our death.

Amen.