It was a single star shining above an ocean of sadness. How could we not join her? Something had tilted. This was it—the end of the line. You are here, the imaginary sign proclaimed. This burnt out, fully smoked, nothing-left-but-the-filter cigarette stub of a week had come to an end.
Lilly’s laughter spread and caught us all. The room erupted, everyone clutching at the arms and legs of another member of this ragtag crew, not ceasing, but growing, the sound of it mounting as tears flooded down our faces and we hit our chests in a desperate attempt to breathe.
“What’s so funny?” the boys asked, entering from the kitchen.
Soon they were guffawing too. We all knew we were gathered for a sober purpose, but holy hell it felt good.
Even at the end of this horrible day, we found a way to laugh. All together. To eat guacamole. Because that is how any day should end— whether it be a funeral, a hanging, a luau, a quinceañera, or a Tuesday. And though I have never been part of a street gang, I would wager that this kind of camaraderie felt pretty close—the kind of feel good we-sure-weathered-that-storm-together type togetherness that put one in the mood to play chicken and steal a stop sign.
I never would have believed it, but as I rolled on the floor, face aching, lungs positively burning from the sheer strength and necessity of the laughter, I knew: somehow, someday, it was all going to be alright.
Someday.
16 Fran Steinman makes some serious (and non-yellow) dessert. Do not get between that woman and a power mixer.
The Letter from Haley
The day after the funeral, a letter arrived from Haley DeKorne.
When I had met Haley at Interlochen, we were both juniors in high school, but Haley had the special honor of being a “third-year junior,” meaning she had been at Interlochen since her freshman year and would graduate as a “four-year senior”—a rare and very special designation.
Haley was a native of Traverse City, Michigan, which is not a city, really, but a large town (though it is city-like now) that is the closest city to Interlochen itself. She lived there with her mother, just the two of them. Because of her proximity, Haley was a day student and commuted in from town and only occasionally spent the night, often with Jessica, also a third-year junior.
My most significant memories of Haley were shared in what is still to this day one of the greatest acting challenges of my life, playing Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker opposite Haley as Helen Keller. It was an honor to be cast straight out of the gate at Interlochen. The talent pool was extraordinary and I was exhilarated at being able to properly cut my teeth with such talented young people—high-flying athletes who improved my own game.
I had played this role the previous year back home, and getting to revisit it was a gift. Though Annie Sullivan was a dream part, the three girls I shared the role with were the kind of mean we can only be in high school—merciless for reasons I still to this day do not understand. And as we all know, the world is mighty small at sixteen, and they likely didn’t understand that my father was battling cancer and couldn’t even come see me in the play. This revisitation to The Miracle Worker was not only a gift to my soul, for thanks to those girls I desperately needed a “do-over,” but it was a chance for my father to finally see me conquer it and soar.
Robin directed Haley and I in both of our first leading roles at Interlochen. While that story of fortitude and conquering of adversity covered us in more physical bruises than we cold count, it bonded us “forever and ever”17 and set in motion the deepest relationship to a place I still have yet to match.
After Interlochen, Haley committed to an academic track and spent the first year of college at the American University of Paris and, despite the glory of her first few weeks in Paris on her grand adventure, when everything crumbled and our mighty gang of Interlochen comrades reunited in Metro Detroit, there was a Haley-shaped hole in the scenery.
Then that Saturday, her letter arrived:
It’s 4 a.m. now, so I’m philosophizing. Thinking about distances and love. I feel all bruised inside with large pieces of my heart so physically far away. But then I think that’s in my head, and that really my love is with you and my mom and everyone just as strongly now as if we were in the same room. It’s just a little harder to realize it. So I hope you’re able to feel your father’s love, and yours for him, even if there seems to be a distance between. I think distance is like time: created for our minds, without real existence.
But love does exist, really, strongly, the most absolute thing I know. So strong it causes bruises. Yes, we know all about those . . .
This evening I was part of a discussion with some friends about the ever-present beggars—if one should give them money, if it would actually help them, etc. I think if you had been there you wouldn’t have bothered with all the intellectualizing, you would have responded with that amazingly generous heart of yours (which was what the conversation needed). So I wish you had been there because it refreshes and inspires me to see that wonderful heart in action. It is truly a gift that no other talent can rival, I hope you realize that. I read a great play where one line I caught was “Vous aimez: c’est assez.” Meaning: “You love: that’s enough.” And even though it can’t always feel that simple, I’m convinced, that underneath it is.
Although because I’m human I can’t help but doubt that. Each time a flower falls from my plant (her name is Lady D’Abenville) I am shaken. But in time, with patience, new buds always come. If I don’t remember to look for them they can be easy to miss, but they’re always there.
I’m yawning, so not having finished my work I think I’ll sleep anyways. I’m proud of my priority adjustment.
I’ll be with you in my sleep as I am in my days—soft breezes and lighted windows at night.
Haley
Until this letter, it had not occurred to me that we have the capacity to give, receive, and feel love from vast distances. When I closed my eyes and simply thought about Haley sitting in her room in the middle of Paris, I realized I required no letter to remind me of our bond, the letter merely evoked a feeling that was already latent and existing. And, while I could point to Paris on a map, and note that Paris is where Haley theoretically was, I could still sense her friendship, could physically feel and experience her, loving me from afar.
Haley was so far away from all of us, and of course we all felt her absence at the funeral for she was one of us. But from so far away and on a single sheet of paper she taught me that though I may never be able to point to my father’s exact location upon a map the way I could so easily point to Paris, this sensation of remote loving was no different. Haley could not attend the funeral and subsequent bizarre festivities, but she palpably helped me, from afar. I felt her love. And knew she could feel mine. Why should it be any different with Papa?
For this reason, Haley’s letter is now framed and has been in the foyer of every home I have ever occupied in my adult life.
Forever and ever.
17 “forever and ever”—is a direct quote from William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker.
Baby Steps
“Dr. Marvin. You can help
For the first time in my life, I feel like there’s hope.”
—What About Bob?
It was one to three weeks on . . . give or take . . . about a month after the funeral, and What About Bob? was on.
Of course. It had been on, solidly, for a week.
The scene on the screen was Bob and Dr. Marvin’s first psychotherapy session in Dr. Leo Marvin’s fancy midtown Manhattan office. The office is stuffy despite its large window overlooking the city, cramped with heavy metallic lamps, awards on the wall, and a large bronze bust of Dr. Sigmund Freud. After listening to Bob Wiley—his newest patient—for only a matter of minutes, Dr. Marvin interrupts him:
DR. MARVIN: Bob, there is a groundbreaking new book that has just come out—ah!
Dr. Marvin selects one from dozens of copies of the same, completely visible, book.
BOB: Baby Steps?
DR. MARVIN: It means setting small, reasonable goals for yourself, one day at a time. One tiny step at a time.
BOB: (wonderstruck) Baby steps.
DR. MARVIN: For instance, when you leave this office, don’t think about everything you have to do in order to get out of the building. Just think of what you must do to get out of this room, and when you get to the hall, deal with that hall, and so forth. You see?
BOB: Baby steps!
DR. MARVIN: Baby steps.
BOB: Oh boy . . .
Baby steps. Agonizingly accurate for me at that moment.
Grey had moved the television from the master bedroom into the upstairs office across the landing. The master bedroom had a kind of force field around it—invisible and not discussed. I think all of us were aware that we did not want to be those people who got all histrionic about the loss of a loved one—as if that were somehow not acceptable. How many feelings should we have, exactly? How many feelings should we refrain from feeling? Or, how many should we feel, but refrain from outright displaying?
Mom and I spent a lot of time wondering if we were reacting “normally.” Grey, Lilly, and Kent spent a lot of time wondering the same thing. What do you do when you are eighteen and nothing this devastating has really ever happened to you yet? You can’t say things are OK, or allowed, or understandable because you have no idea if they are or they aren’t—you are eighteen. You are a child. The closest you have ever gotten to death is the class guinea pig dying in kindergarten. You do not yet realize what you do not yet know.
So, in that vein, we did not actively close off the Room of Death. No. We just operated under a silent agreement that all would be quiet. We’d keep it light. We could and would pretend that all comings and goings to and from the Room of Death were no big thing. Look at me, Death, our silent attitude declared. Check me! Check me as I casually use the Master Bathroom as a legitimate alternative to other household bathrooms! I am using it because there is a shower/bath, and because it is a valid option and therefore should be utilized as such. The “someone died here five minutes ago” thing? Yeah. It is no big thing.
But it was.
It was a very big thing.
It remained untouched.
Kent and Mom’s friend Nancy had gotten to work on the master bathroom (or the Bathroom of Death, if you will),18 sorting through every pill, tube, catheter, plug, prescription bottle, and machine before throwing all of it away without a great deal of ceremony.
“We disposed of the disease,” Kent said after returning from wherever these trinkets had been discarded. “We left the man.” And indeed, the gold watch, the spare loose coins he always counted as he thought and calmed himself, the scraps of paper covered in his signature all-caps scrawl, the distinctive cologne that smelled so much of him that it pierced directly into my heart—they were all still there.
Those days were full of harrowing little tasks like that, and I was glad I didn’t have to do them alone.
The death sheets were cleaned and folded, the bed made anew, the room scrubbed down, the machines carted away—as if none of it had ever happened at all. Mom’s friends, along with mine, took on the duties that would eventually create the House of Death we came to know after the death itself was long in the past. All that could remind us of the horrors of terminal disease remained in our memories alone.
But the absence of objects is also a kind of silence. No one could have prepared us for the pulsing soundlessness that pervaded every waking moment, that the lack of Michael, along with the lack of his artifacts (both of the life and the lack-of-life variety) would in fact leave us with no touchstones for our anguish, no tools with which to dig out the emotions trapped so deep within us.
Dad’s office across the hall already had a small twin bed in the corner and was now doubling as what could only be described as “Mom’s Temporary Place of Sleeping.”
At the time, we had one of those late-nineties TVs with a built-in VHS player. It would swallow the already war-worn copy of Bob, and every time it reached the end of the tape it would automatically rewind, eject, and the VHS tape would sit in the open mouth of the TV, awaiting instruction—a blank face with its tongue sticking out.
Before a second of silence could go by I would panic, rushing to the machine to push the cassette back in. There are no words to describe how much I loved the way it swallowed the tape with such efficient, satisfying obedience, and I adored the sound of the predigital cogs churning within, of each electronic stage it took to bring Bob’s infinite wisdom back to me again.
DR. MARVIN: Are you married?
BOB: I’m divorced.
DR. MARVIN: Would you like to talk about that?
BOB: There are two types of people in this world: Those who like Neil Diamond, and those who don’t. My ex-wife loves him.
And again. Bob, with his judicious ability to ask for exactly what he needs:
BOB: (to man on bus) Hi, I’m Bob. Would you knock me out, please? Just hit me in the face . . .
And again. Bob, knowing there is soundness even in folly.
DR. MARVIN: I want some peace and quiet!
BOB: Yeah, I’ll be quiet.
SIGGY: I’ll be peace!
(Bob and Siggy burst into giggles.)
And again. The film, speaking the truth directly to me:
DR. MARVIN: Why are you always wearing black? What is it with you and this death fixation?
SIGGY: Maybe I’m in mourning for my lost childhood . . .
It was in this period that I came to know What About Bob? beyond reason or sanity. In that week, I did not laugh at all. I watched this seemingly light, harmless comedy not only because it comforted me; I watched it because it reminded me of life before this moment. I came to see that the characters in it were somehow speaking to me, reaching through the screen and talking directly to me.
Bob on endless loop. Bob, as comforting as any friend or food or love.
I would jolt on occasion when I heard his voice. Dad and Bill Murray always shared a similar kind of cadence, particularly when Bill Murray went into his “childlike comedy” mode.
“Ha!” Bob would burst out, and I would jolt upward, certain Dad was back before I remembered and sank back into myself, and the bed, once more.
If I kept it on, somehow Dad would come around the corner any second and join me.
After a few days, Fran Steinman came by. She stood over me and glanced over my particular state of wretchedness and tried to hide how much the sight of my despair turned her stomach. She caught herself mid-shudder and plastered a frighteningly cheerful smile on her face. “I see we are doing a little too much sitting in this bed and not enough getting on with things,” she said.
My eyes moved toward her but my body remained motionless, too dazed to be embarrassed. My eyes peeled away from her and back toward the screen like a mud-soaked sloth, not even daring to respond. She sighed and left the room, unable to stir me.
She was trying to help.
Was she trying to tell me that my love of Bob was wrong?
Because if Bob was wrong, then I didn’t want to know what right was.
I woke with a start. I had been in the bed for a week. Pajamas filthy, hair matted, and Bob on a bender of inexhaustible reruns.
I did not know what time it was. I did not know the day. All I knew was that it was dark. In every sense. And that I was alone.
But Bob was there, and the blue flame from the small television flickered, more comforting than a fire.
I opened my eyes to discover Bob helping little Siggy dive.
My beloved Bob approached the dock to discover Siggy, dressed fully in black and all alone, sitting on an upright wooden post, red bicycle discarded beside him, despondently playing a hand-held video game. Dr. Marvin insisted that Siggy learn to
dive despite Siggy’s paralyzing fear of the water. Early in the movie, Dr. Marvin spied Bob sailing past him on a boat with Dr. Marvin’s daughter, and in the shock, accidentally dropped Siggy in the water without warning.
Bob was elated, having just returned from his first experience of sailing, and was still draped in his orange life vest that he left casually untied atop his bright blue shirt that read “Don’t Hassle Me, I’m Local.”
Bob gazed upon Siggy and approached slowly.
BOB: Notice anything different about me?
SIGGY: (he contemplates Bob for a moment) No.
BOB: Do you sail?
SIGGY: No.
BOB: Well I just picked it up. Heh!(He chuckles.) Wonder what I’m gonna pick up next?
SIGGY: Try diving. (He retorts sarcastically, returning to his video game.)
BOB: Alright, diving . . .
SIGGY. I know a great teacher. (He sighs. Considers for a moment, before venting a confession to Bob.) I mean, my dad just dropped me in the water. Without warning me first. I mean, I nearly drowned! My whole life passed before my eyes.
BOB: You’re lucky you’re only twelve.
SIGGY: It was still grim.
I knew exactly what he meant.
SIGGY: I mean what is it with him and diving? What’s the big deal?
BOB: Well . . . (Bob walks out further onto the dock and sees the depth of the water.) Whoa . . . (He ties his life vest on tightly before continuing.) He probably just wants you to beat it, that’s all. You know, he probably just wants you to dive, because you’re afraid of diving.
(Siggy rolls his eyes as only a twelve-year-old can, but knows Bob is right.)
BOB: Did I tell you? I sailed on my first try! (Bob throws his arms in the air, congratulating himself like a proud child.) I just let the boat do the work, that was my secret. But with diving, what’s the thing? What’s the trick?
White Hot Grief Parade Page 11