Excerpts from
Chapter One: Friday from my book ...
Letter to my son the weekend he died.
(Because six years ago today, Friday ...)
Dear Paul,
You died today--- maybe you know that.
The number: 24. Willie Mays. Jack Bauer. Chromium. You.
Read once that death surprises everyone but the one who died, but as I look at you, lying on your stomach, propped up on your elbows in your room with three members of the Tulsa Police Department in and around your door, you don't look like you were ready for it. There's nothing remarkable about seeing you this way. Your face is full, your cheeks have color, you were in the middle of something. You look asleep (on your stomach, it's how you sleep), healthy, still in your clothes, passed out from a night of drinking, perhaps, staring at a laptop.
But not ready for death.
Your face, the more I look at it, though, is not full--it's bloated, discolored. That's the color I'm seeing. Blueish, white ... gray almost. You could have been in a fight. There's nothing remarkable about seeing you this way. I've seen it before, like the time that kid hit you in the head with whatever he hit you in the head that sent you to the hospital.
But not ready for death.
(Remarkable. That word. I'll have to tell you about it, but not now.)
I hear walkie-talkies, see cops in latex gloves looking around your room with flashlights, know your mother is in the living room with Bob--so I can't focus. Bodies, blue pant legs keep obscuring my view of you.
The Godfather, remember? "I don't want his mother to see him this way."
The cop as much says so.
"Your wife doesn't need to come in here."
"Ex."
"Really, better to keep her out."
I'm 50, and the only other person I ever saw dead this close was my mother, your grandmother, and she was lying there, covered in methadone patches for pain, a skeleton, cancer having made a mess of her body. I was at the foot of the bed, looking at her, her neck and chin taut, her arms at her sides. She was on her back, expressionless, frightened, not at all at peace.
But she didn't look surprised. She knew it was coming.
You weren't ready.
--
Your idiot friend is walking in front yard, drinking from a 2-liter Dr. Pepper, and he's crying. That little fuck gets to go home tonight and lie to his parents about what happened before you died.
--
You were going to be my best man five years ago, remember? You were going to stand next to your sister and me under a Chuppah and watch me smash the traditional glass to ward off evil spirits (or whatever the superstition is) and then, I hoped anyway, kiss and hug me and tell me how happy you were for me.
My son, my best man.
But then you stood me up.
--
Drugs, right? Of course it was drugs.
--
I have to call my father to tell him about my son. When I get home, not from the car.
He just called, your grandfather, and left a message about winning eleven hundred dollars at Craps.
It's been a good day
He's 81, and I don't know how he'll take this. You're not supposed to outlive your kids, and you're certainly not supposed to outlive your grandkids. Once on a courtesy van to the airport, I heard two guys talking and the conversation went like this:
Man 1: You hear about Bill's mom?
Man 2: No, what happened?
Man 1: She died.
Man 2: Oooh, sorry. How old?
Man 1: 95
Man 2: 95? Well, that's enough.
Your grandfather loves that story. Whenever he tells me stories about friends of his who have died late in life, he'll say something like, "Lived to ninety. Did all right." Even when talking about your grandmother, when she died at 69, and even though he maintains she could have, should have ("It wouldn't have killed anybody") had ten more years, will say, "She wasn't cut short. She had a life."
Did you ... have a life? I don't think so.
--
The rabbi's in Iowa. He'll try to get back.
--
Watching some of my friends here in the living room, some of the fathers, I wish my DNA had been different, I wish I had done this better. A father takes care of his son; the rest--the baseball games and walks and latenight snack and college trips and the hundred million other things--is, I don't know, a narrative we tell others. Your "Uncle" Mike still refers to Ben and James, his sons, as "my boys," and when he says it, he's not self-conscious; he says it with joy, ease. I never referred to you that way. I talked of "Paul," but rarely "my boy."
There were two of you.
--
It's Friday, "Pizza" night, remember? When you and Nina were little, we made sure each we did something special each day I had visitation. Monday was the night we made spaghetti and monster meatballs in cheap T-Fal pots and pans; Tuesday, candy at Mr. Bulky's; Wednesday, bagels; Thursday, a trip to an arcade; Friday was pizza; Saturday ... what was Saturday, anyway?; and Sunday was the day we went visiting, usually to see your great uncle and aunt.
But today ... Friday.
You and Nina took turns sitting in the front seat of my white Mazda GLC and I'd charge a dime if either one of your failed to put on your seat belt within ten seconds of starting the car. I never collected, did I?
You owe me money.
---
One last thing: I remember once when your Uncle Wayne and I were younger, fourteen and sixteen, and we were out late. Your grandmother started worrying, she told me years later. We didn't have a curfew, something she and your grandfather never imposed, but for some reason this night, she had a bad feeling, a premonition. This was before cellphones so there was nobody to call, no texts to send.
"Ba, I was beside myself."
She didn't wake up your grandfather, which she thought of doing; instead, she said she paced through the house, through the kitchen, even the garage, until she got tired, very tired, and couldn't stay awake any longer; so, to hear her tell it, she looked up to the ceiling and said to God (and this was not a religious woman), "You better be up there, because I'm going to bed."
I always liked the image of your grandmother, standing in a housecoat, looking up at the ceiling in the middle of her living room (I can see her pointing a finger) and demanding--not asking, demanding--God to do his job.
That story has nothing to do with you.
That story has everything to do with you.