Letters To My Little Brother: Misadventures In Growing Older (11 page)

Everyone — in this upcoming, massively vague generalization — is fucked up in the head. Some people are like me. We can’t stop thinking. We’ve flown so far off the handle that we hardly know what the handle is anymore. Some people don’t think enough at all. Some people are bipolar and others are just plain depressed. Does that make them crazy? No. No it doesn’t.

Jerry West, the basketball legend who lends his likeness to the NBA logo, admitted in his best-selling memoir that he battled depression throughout his long and esteemed career. Or so I heard. I clearly didn’t read the book. Who has time for books these days, let alone non-fiction? [See what I did there?] In the five-minute interview I saw on SportsCenter, West discussed the mental “torment” he felt even as he reached levels of success unknown to all but the most elite players.

I wondered why his admission came as a shock to the general public. What was the big deal, I asked? Certainly it’s obvious that he was depressed at some point during his lifetime. He’s an icon, sure, but he’s also a human being. A man with emotions. Was he depressed after a loss? After his divorce? Either way it makes sense.

Depression, I thought, is sort of like taking a shit: everyone does it, but only weirdoes and shrinks (or possibly both) like talking about it. I for one can recount many a bout with depression. I can tell you the months and the years and the thoughts and the memories of my depression. I can tell you the songs I liked and the reasons I still can’t delete them from my iTunes. I can tell you why I was depressed and what finally shook me out of it.

Does that make me crazy?

I am not a weirdo or a shrink, so this admission about my mental health is not something that you’d normally be able to pry out of me. I don’t like telling people my symptoms: consciously closing off my social life, binge-watching every season of a TV show, spending hours falling asleep when I’m tired then waking up 30 minutes before my alarm. I usually have to remind myself to throw on a smile and leave it there until a few seconds after my fellow interlocutor’s grin fades. I’ll always say I’m fine or okay rather than good. I’ll mumble when addressed directly about my feelings, the awkward silence telling everyone to stop fucking asking me if I’m happy or not. My tongue forks and my personality slides from slightly to seriously sarcastic. My temper shortens. I can literally feel the rage calm the quivering in my hands and fingertips, and I wonder what I’m capable of. What scares me is that deep down inside, I don’t think I have a limit. I’ve been there before. I’ve seen the pool at the base of the bottomless abyss. The reflection looks just like me.

Don’t worry, I’m not going postal. I’m not suicidal, and I’m only dangerous to the pieces of paper upon which I write. I’m saying that over time I’ve come to know my depression inside and out. If my depression were on Facebook, we’d be friends. He’d pop up on my Mini Feed from time to time. (Yes, my depression is a ‘he.’ As sexist as it sounds, I usually associate my anguish over women with something sharp and severe. My depression is heavy, slow and consuming, which I associate with masculinity.) Sometimes I’ll photo-stalk him. He likes hanging out with my exes. We’d probably be Eskimo Brothers with a few of them. We might even stay up late instant messaging about Notre Dame football, prescriptivist grammar, and whether store brand Fruity O’s are better or worse than Fruit Loops.

I might be close with him, but that doesn’t mean I am him. He doesn’t own me. He made me play Emotional Soggy Biscuit in high school, and he forced me to elephant walk with my inner angst in college, but he’s not my pledge master anymore.

Discussions about mental illness, depression, and mania need to be had. These aren’t just First World Problems for kids with health insurance and too much time to think. They do not mean you’re “crazy.”

I hope you’re comfortable sharing your feelings with me. My train-hopping mind may be the key to my letters, humor, and insights — and I like that — but I also recognize the inherent dangers and costs. So talk to me. I know how to handle it. I’ll never call you crazy. I don’t think such a word applies to mental health. We’re all crazy. What is normal anyways?

Love,

-Big Boy

CHAPTER Twelve:

How to Put the fun back in funerals

Dear Squirrel,

I woke up early that Sunday morning to the sound of my mom frantically banging on your door. With the telephone in her other hand she explained to a 911 responder, “My father-in-law has had a stroke. He’s 98. He’s having trouble breathing and he can’t move his right side.” I raced out of bed, making it to our grandpa’s room in the basement before you. Z, our grandpa, was curled in the fetal position on the bed, mid-stroke. His face swung back and forth between shades of Gryffindor scarlet and Violet Beauregard blue as he coughed out the phlegm from his lungs. He kept trying to talk, but his paralyzed lips refused to make the sounds. We didn’t need to say it aloud to know that this was the end.

He was dying.

Z had lived with us for ten years. The first few years were rough. It was like having another child in the house, except this child had dementia and routinely saw “bull-headed cats” and “women sticking candles in their behinds.” I’m pretty sure he’d never been to a Amsterdam/Bangkok sex show in his life, nor do I imagine he befriended anyone that had, so I’m confident that these were all part of his wild delusions. His mind was like a Bizzaro children’s book. Instead of poppy fields, fair maidens, and humble knights, he envisioned creeping floods, crowded cemeteries, and crusading armies of wooden soldiers. Z was routinely disagreeable, often finding new racial epithets to make young, open-minded kids like me blush.

As time went on though, he softened up. By the end of his life, I’d slip a sip of Maker’s Mark in his morning coffee to help prime him for the day and sneak him a shot again every night. Once, when Dad and I gave him some tequila (which he pronounced as “tuh-quill-uh”), he giggled like a schoolgirl because he was too drunk to lift his leg and climb into bed. He was a good sport and a great grandfather.

After the stroke, we sat him up in bed and called our other family members. He listened to his daughter and granddaughter on the phone. He tried to speak back, but instead he mumbled as he faded in and out of consciousness. He clutched his rosary, silently saying his Hail Mary’s. The strangest thing about it all, though, was how he kept reaching for his wallet in his breast pocket. It’s as if he knew he was dying and he wanted to make damn sure none us stole his money. He’d spent so long acquiring it that he wasn’t gonna let nothing and nobody prevent him from holding onto it till his dying breath.

After an hour of watching his physical debilitation, I went to Starbucks to get Dad a coffee and Mom her favorite latte while they stayed with Z. I figured it was a thoughtful gesture during such a hectic, emotional time. Once on the road, though, I found it unexpectedly strange reentering mainstream society. I saw people filling their gas tanks, buying the groceries, and waiting impatiently at traffic lights. Normal, everyday life kinda stuff. For them, the world was still spinning. Time wasn’t suspended for them like it was for me.

The ladies at Starbucks made small talk with me while preparing my mom’s (highly complex) latte. I smiled with the least amount of effort possible in order to humor their ceaseless, inane banter.

“You sound just like your father,” they said.
No
shit, I thought,
that’s cause I’m his son. Now I’m not good at that whole “science” thing, but I’m pretty sure I’ve got half his DNA
.
Oh, and he raised me. That helps explain it too.
I was about two deep breaths from bursting out and screaming, “Hey, could you do me a favor and hurry the fuck up? My grandfather is gasping his last lungful of air back at home. No big deal or anything. He’s just going to gurgle and cough a few final times before permanently leaving for the Great Beyond. It’s only a life and death issue. It’s not like I want to spend any more time with him while he’s alive or anything. I’ll have plenty of time with his gravestone. Ain’t no thang, you know?”

From my body language or my terse responses, they got the hint.

I made it home, latte and coffee in hand, to find our grandfather in the same state as before. Half-paralyzed. Gasping. Fighting. We spent the day like that, watching and waiting. It’s kind of awful staring at someone until they finally keel over and die. Instead, I could just grab him by the armpits and lift him into a better sitting position to help him breathe. That was it. Ease his pain and stare. You end up going through these bizarre trains of thought like, “Should I go upstairs and play video games for a while? It’s not like he’ll necessarily die in the next hour or two.” I’m just not used to “death etiquette,” I guess. Do I call my friends to come and hang out with me, or would it be super awkward to say, “Yeah, let’s chill on the couch, make some popcorn. My grandfather’s downstairs dying, but don’t mind him. Hopefully he’ll quiet down once we start the movie.” When I showered and dressed, I wondered to myself, “Is this Power Rangers hoodie appropriate for a death? No, I probably should it leave my in the closet today. How about a T-shirt that says “E=MC Hammer”? Nah. Carolina blue polo it is then.”

The next few days were full of jokes aimed at relieving our collective sadness. We celebrated Z’s life as he slowly withered away. We told stories about his awful golf swing, about the time our uncle kept throwing flaming toilet paper at him while he was on the crapper, and about the way he twisted the dogs’ ears instead of petting them. But that’s it. Watching and waiting. And while we are immensely blessed to have had this time with him, it’s been tremendously heartbreaking. Hopefully we can continue to make light of the tragic situation. I’m certain Mom and Dad wouldn’t like it, but I’m debating whether I should make his obituary picture the one from Christmas when he was a Santa-hat and two sleigh bells for boobs. Or, as he would say about one of my exes, two sleigh bells for “bazoombas.”

He passed away a few weeks short of his 99
th
birthday. He told me at Thanksgiving that his goal was to make it to 100-years-old so “the [politically-incorrect term for an African-American person] president would send him one of those congratulatory letters. Funnily enough, in early November he also told me that if Obama is reelected, then it was time for him to go. After 9 days of unconsciousness, never once taking food or drink, Z died. And yeah, he called his shot and passed right before the inauguration.

In accordance with his wishes, we buried him in his hometown in Massachusetts. The only problem was how to get him up there. Now normally bodies are shipped via an airplane’s cargo hold. Dad, though, couldn’t bring himself to do that. He felt it would’ve been a disservice to Z’s memory. “How can we ship him up there in the freezing cargo hold with all the cats and dogs and people’s luggage and vibrators and God knows what else?” I understood not wanting to treat my grandpa’s body with disrespect, but I think he probably would’ve been quite happy to be around the cats and dogs. He probably wouldn’t have minded the vibrators either.

In the end, one of my dad’s friends, a pilot, offered to let us take his private plane to fly to Massachusetts. Since you, like me, were relatively unacquainted with private air travel, let me explain. Private planes are the dopest way to travel ever invented. Ever. You don’t deal with the hassle of TSA security. You don’t sit next to crying babies or people who fart out their in-flight cordon bleus. It’s quite glorious. The one major drawback is that private planes are very small. The plane we took, in fact, was so small we couldn’t fit Z’s body under its belly…

So Z flew in the cabin with us.

Yes, you read that right: I sat next to our grandpa’s corpse for the 1.5 hour flight to Massachusetts.

And, even though it was the most incredibly morbid thing I have possibly ever done, it was seriously hilarious. We couldn’t help but to crack jokes the entire time. “Did anyone see the newspaper?” my dad asked. “Ask Z. He’s been in here the longest,” we’d reply. “Z, why are you so quiet today?” my dad inquired. “This is the least you’ve ever complained about traveling.” “Z, do you want something to drink? How about a shot of Maker’s Mark? Oh come on. You’ve never turned down a drink in your life.”

Do you realize how sick it is to babysit your revered relative’s cold, lifeless body? Every time we hit a bit of turbulence, we’d reach over to make sure he didn’t roll off the stretcher and into the aisle. It was a bit of a knee-jerk reaction in retrospect. Why would we be so frightened that he’d crash onto the floor? It’s not like he’d get hurt or anything. I guess no one wanted to look at that ghastly white blanket wrapped around the shape of his corpse. That and nobody wanted to disrespect his earthly vessel. Either way, it was just strange to look up at his rigid form while playing chess on my phone and listening to “Life” and “Die Die Die” by the Avett Brothers.

When we landed in Massachusetts, we disembarked and went the Polish funeral home. Yes, it was a Polish funeral home. Our grandfather’s town was an immigrant town, each neighborhood containing a different ethnicity. If funeral homes weren’t creepy enough, the funeral director was. He was a small, older Polish man with a thick accent and a well-rehearsed, unbearably-forced laugh. Whenever we called him on the phone, his slow response time and his high voice made it sound like he was in the middle of a long masturbation session, which we were somehow interrupting. “Yeeeees,” he would say. “We caaaaaan do that…yeeeeeees.” I kept imagining we’d hear the pages of his Polish
Playboy
rustling while he spoke to us.

He took Dad and I into the back room to pick a casket. It hadn’t changed a bit since the last time I was there for our great-uncle’s funeral 10 years ago. It was the size of a bedroom, each wall lined with caskets. Some were metal. Some were wood. There were a few assorted urns too. Some were black or blue or grey; some had pictures of the Virgin Mary on them. I honestly don’t know why anyone would want to keep their relative’s ashes, but apparently that’s a thing. I’d be too frightened that I’d catch some sort of rare, burned-body disease. Like maybe I’d accidentally breathe in a little bit of grandpa while cleaning the mantel and wake up with my lungs filled with the evil love child of the hanta virus and the Black Plague.

Now, as a point of fact, I should say that I am afraid of death. It’s pretty much the thing that scares me most. Second is my future and third is never finding the Hollywood romance that I so desperately want to believe in. Either way, standing in a room full of the boxes in which most people will spend eternity terrifies me. I get these cold waves from my head to my toes because I worry that when I die I’ll still have conscious vision of the world around me and I won’t be able to do anything but stare at that cushioned casket roof until Jesus comes down on Judgment Day (as opposed to the Judgment Day in which Skynet becomes sentient, of course). That’s why I want to be cremated and have my ashes thrown off a cliff. I want to join nature and imagine that I’m continuing the life cycle by joining into the soil that grows trees and flowers and komodo dragons and shit like that.

The funeral director tried to up-sell us on the ones with more cushioning, but my dad rejected that because “it’s not like he’ll notice anyways.” He then tried to sell us the one with the red and white cloth interior, calling it the “Polish casket” cause it resembled the motherland’s flag. But we rejected that too, stating, “It’s not like he’ll be looking at it anyways.” Eventually we settled on the cheapest one, therefore honoring Z’s memory by doing exactly what he would’ve done: pinched pennies.

The next day, the local church held a small mass for the family and friends. It was remarkable how many family friends showed up. People flew all the way from Indiana and Louisiana just to say their peace for that one single day. During the mass, you and I had to do the two Bible readings. Since you don’t have the same level of Catholic upbringing that I did, and since I’m not sure you’d been inside a church since your baptism, I kept pestering you every time we had to say a prayer. “Do you remember how to do this?” I joshed. I ended up walking to the altar with a limp because you kicked me in the shin.

The burial was like any other burial. Everyone stood around and cried and stared at the coffin. And that was it. The end. Ninety-nine years and it all concluded with a dozen people waiting around in the snow. What really broke my heart was not the fact that Z was gone, underground forever, but that his grave was right across the street from a Hollywood Video. I’d come to grips with his death and I’d found solace in my/his faith, but I couldn’t possibly rationalize how a man who hadn’t seen a “flicker show” in 50 years was now spending every day across from a shitty spinoff of Blockbuster. And isn’t Hollywood Video bankrupt now? Who still goes to video stores??

But that was it. We flew home. We cleaned up his room and donated his belongings. We have to throw away our leftovers now since he isn’t around to eat them. His cat keeps wandering around seeking attention because he’s not there to pet her. But life moves on. We still have jobs and partners and friends and hockey games to attend to. Life moves on.

On his birthday, I wished I had the old boy to talk to. I’d love to hit him in the shoulder 99 times and then pull his hair for a “pinch to grow an inch.” I’d love to hear him whine about how much his shoulder hurt now and I’d love to call him a big baby before giving him a Hershey’s bar and a bottle of whiskey. But, in my heart of hearts, I still feel some happiness. I always questioned why I quit my job and came home, whether it was the right decision or not. But when he died, I found my answer. You can call it chance or you can say that God works in mysterious ways. Take your pick. For me, though, I now know that I came home to spend his last 3 months alongside him. And for that I will feel forever blessed.