by Mary Adkins
Patient arrived in acute distress, having recently experienced the death of his colleague. He professed concern that his distress would trigger an uncontrolled bout of gambling, and said that he was seeking help in order to prevent a “spiral” such as the one he experienced following his divorce, which was also the last time he visited this office.
I affirmed his choice to preemptively seek treatment in an effort to avoid what he felt was his typical, destructive response to grief. We spent the remainder of the session allowing him space to express his feelings, as he seemed eager to do.
We discussed the colleague (Iris), whose presence in his life seemed to be that of a sort of surrogate partner.
He left by stating that he doubted he would return to my office, given his general “distaste for therapy,” but that, once again, he appreciated my willingness to see him in his current crisis. I made it clear that he should call without fearing I will bully him into committing to a regular therapeutic schedule. Given his previously sporadic interest in clinical work, this seemed the safest approach.
End of all entries for patient.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Mon, Oct 26 at 11:32 PM
subject:
my dad
* * *
“He touched many lives and will be dearly missed.”
The last line of my father’s obituary, still available on the Sun Prairie Star’s website, was written by a woman who worked for the paper, after she told me that the obit I submitted was too short.
Touched many lives. What a load of shit.
When I buried him, I’ve never felt so alone, or so adult. Overnight, roles had switched. My dad was gone, my mom was in the hospital, barely conscious, and there were decisions to be made and bills to be paid. I picked out a casket. I signed papers listing fees for things I didn’t know existed—body prep, body transport, insurance for if there’s a flood at the cemetery. It cost everything I’d saved in my twenties. Did you know you can skip embalming? Or even the coffin altogether, if you’re down for a “natural burial”? But not knowing if he wanted these or not, I wasn’t going to cut corners. Not on my own father.
Neither of my parents had thought ahead to anything about dying or getting injured. They didn’t have wills or life insurance. She sure as hell didn’t have any kind of long-term disability. I bought a plot in the cemetery in the middle of town. The burial was minutes long. I stood there next to my great-aunts as a guy around my age, mid-twenties, shoveled clumps of dirt that trickled over the glossy black box. Then he picked up speed, and the dirt piled up until there was nothing but a freshly tilled rectangle of soil bigger than my dad.
And all I kept thinking that night was, sure, it was bad before. They had their issues. But she’d made it infinitely worse. She’d ended the bad, but she’d ended the good, too. Now we had nothing.
So yes, I’m mad. I’m angry she didn’t stand up for herself sooner, so it didn’t have to end that way. I’m angry she let him treat her how he did, and I feel guilty about that, but I do, because I don’t get to be angry at him anymore. He’s gone. There’s no one but her to be fucking angry at. I’m mad she got dragged into it. I’m mad she’s paralyzed, and that I wasn’t there to stop it. I’m mad at us both, and it may not be fair, but, fuck, I am.
* * *
from:
Bobbles Internet Hosting
to:
[email protected]
date:
Mon, Oct 26 at 11:33 PM
subject:
AUTOMATIC RESPONSE—YOUR EMAIL WAS NOT DELIVERED—DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL <
* * *
SIMONYI.COM Administrator,
Because this account was not renewed, it has been discontinued per the user agreement, which states that 90 days following failure to renew the address, it will become defunct. If you would like to restore the email address [email protected] please contact Bobbles Customer Care. Note that per the user agreement, email previously sent to and from this address cannot be restored even if the address is reactivated.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Mon, Oct 26 at 11:35 PM
subject:
Fwd: my dad
* * *
For you, below.
Tuesday, October 27
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 6:17 PM
subject:
no subject
* * *
Still emailing Iris, I see. Why’d you forward it?
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 8:59 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
I figured if any server reaches beyond this life, it’s Google.
Still checking her email, I see.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 9:45 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
Trying to figure out what she wanted.
I read your email. Sorry. I think I miss talking to you.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 10:13 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
Doesn’t matter.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 10:30 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
Sounds like you’re going through some shit.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 10:35 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
We don’t need to talk about it.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 10:41 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
Is that why you email this stuff to someone who is dead? So you don’t have to talk about it? You can just share into the void and not hear back what you don’t want to hear?
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 10:42 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
Jade, please? I know I’m a fuckup.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Tue, Oct 27 at 10:50 PM
subject:
re: no subject
* * *
Just go see your mom, Smith. Fuck your whole regrets theory. That’s not why you need to go.
http://dyingtoblog.com/irismassey
March 23 | 6:44 PM
It’s back. Rather, it was never gone. Just migrated south a bit, to my liver.
And this time, in its new location, it isn’t likely to be responsive to chemo. So today I told Smith that this week wil
l be my last of work. Richie, Jade—they can handle it. But I’m not sure Smith can. It’s time to go before I begin to disappear.
As of Monday, my existence at Simonyi Brand Management will be no more than an absence. Then this will be true of my apartment. Then it will be true everywhere.
Could my absence on this earth do some good? Is it possible? (Apart from the obvious, that there is one fewer person on the planet consuming resources.)
At the high school where I spent my twelfth-grade year, we had Sharing Is Caring Day, a fundraiser for the school’s special ed program. For us students, it meant a day full of games and prizes, the last of which was a scavenger hunt. My team consisted of six kids in a pickup, three in back, three in front. Our acquisitions included:
A photo of a live chicken
A helium balloon
A round of gin rummy with a retirement home resident
A whole tub of movie popcorn, consumed
A lock of someone’s hair
Documentation of the biggest bubble blown by any team member
A school T-shirt from five or more years ago
Still to go: a dad’s joke.
In the McDonald’s parking lot, we shifted our focus from person to person.
“Can’t help.”
“Not me.”
“Mine’s dead.”
None of us had dads. All six of us, and not a single dad.
We could ask a dad of somebody on another team, someone suggested, but the consensus was that that would be uncool.
“Mr. Morris is a dad,” one person pointed out. No one jumped at the idea because the thing was, our principal Mr. Morris’s son had died a few years earlier. But if we asked him, at least there wasn’t the issue of trespassing on another team’s turf.
We headed to Mr. Morris’s. When we got there, he was in his pajamas. You could see his wife through the window, watching TV. We told him we were doing the Sharing Is Caring scavenger hunt and needed a dad joke, but none of us had dads.
“How do you know a wildcat from a bobcat?” he asked.
“How?” we all yelled.
“One answers to Bob and the other doesn’t!”
At first no one laughed. It was so awful. Then we all did, including Mr. Morris. He didn’t have a son anymore, and we didn’t have dads anymore, and here we all were because of it, laughing about a bobcat.
Maybe once I’m gone, the fact that I’m missing will bring people together, too.
COMMENTS (1):
BigJessBarbs: I would have used a mom for the joke and said TAKE THAT sexist pigs!
Friday, October 30
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:02 AM
subject:
Third and Final Contact
* * *
Dear Mr. Simons,
I write for a third and final time to offer you the opportunity to benefit from the teachings of Apex by working with me on my brand. Also I am willing to pay you. Was that not clear before? Who among us does not like money?
I eagerly anticipate your enthusiastic, though delayed, response.
Sincerely,
Ronald P. Glass
Why You Should Not Care About Time
BY RONALD P. GLASS
Tick tock! Tick tock!
Clocks lead us to believe that time exists.
However, they are pointing us wrong, as hands often do.
Time is as stretchy as a wad of Silly Putty. Don’t believe me? Just send your twin into space! She will come back dewy and elastic, while you’ve pruned up like a thumb in a tub.
If you cling to the view that time matters, it will.
If you understand that a minute can hold all the wonder of an hour or week or lifetime, you will leap like a man on the moon.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:15 AM
subject:
You won’t believe this
* * *
Boss,
I have some news.
Iris almost quit her job three years ago.
How I know this is—long story short, the bottom left drawer in my desk has been stuck since Day 1. It won’t go in all the way and drives me nuts because of my #ocd. So this morning I decided to fix it, finally. I removed it from its base, and, lo and behold, there were some papers stuck back behind the track. They were drafts that Iris wrote telling you she was going to quit, dated three years ago. Maybe you knew this? Hopefully not so I can feel valuable and my ego will get the same shot of dopamine it does when I meet a deadline or get an A! Just kidding!
How was BRANDISH doing three years ago?
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:28 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
Huh. Well, I can’t say I’m surprised.
It wasn’t about the firm flailing, though. Three years ago we were doing well. The only thing I can think of that happened around that time is that Iris was supposed to get married.
And our name isn’t BRANDISH. Nice try.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:32 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
Oh. Oh boy.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:34 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
What? Carl, you know how I feel about cryptic emails. Almost at front of line at Starbucks, I’ll be there in 10 or so.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:35 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
Do you want me to lie or do you want the truth?
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:36 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
For fuck’s sake, Carl.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:39 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
Backstory of the last ~15 minutes: I thought it was weird that this never came up in her blog. And then I thought, well, maybe she had posts she wrote and didn’t publish. That happens, you know? So I logged into her dyingtoblog.com account (she should have known better than to keep a document on the desktop titled PASSWORDS—she wasn’t 85). And . . . she did. Have unpublished drafts.
* * *
from:
[email protected]
to:
[email protected]
date:
Fri, Oct 30 at 9:40 AM
subject:
re: You won’t believe this
* * *
Carl! That’s not okay!
* * *