My father was a man of deep faith who somehow raised five children of five different beliefs. He never questioned this. He said it made the dinner table more interesting.

When he was dying — really dying, in the final hours — we were all there. My sister who is Christian. My brother who is Muslim, like my father. My other brother who converted to Judaism twenty years ago and never looked back. My youngest sister who has found her faith in Buddhism. And me — who believes in something but has never found a name for it that fits.

Full of something. I don't have the word for it. Something quiet and enormous. Something that didn't care at all which of us had the right name for it.

My father passed with all five of his children around him, not one of us agreeing on what happens next, all of us completely certain that we loved him and that he knew it.

Afterwards my brother — the Muslim — held my youngest sister — the Buddhist — for a long time. Neither of them said anything. They didn't need to.

I have thought about that room many times since. About what was in it. About the fact that five entirely different beliefs, held sincerely and deeply by five entirely different people, all pointed — in that room, in that moment — toward the exact same place.

I don't think that was a coincidence. I think that is the truth.