A child is crying. One of the children who had been playing beneath the trees canopy fell while skipping along the path and scraped a knee. His mother, a woman with shoulder length brown hair tied in a small ponytail, was comforting the child telling him that it was just a scratch, and it would go away soon. Tears formed in my eyes. My mother had over time soothed a lot of my tears. For the millionth time in the thirteen months since her death I wish she was here to comfort me.
I turned to Conor and say, “Because I could have made a difference.”
“What do you mean?”
“When Mom died, there was nothing I could do. She had lung cancer and the cure had screwed up her lungs. It was just a matter of time before that time bomb went off. While I could beat myself up for not being home when it happened, in the end it would not have changed a thing.”
Wiping the tears away with the back of my hand I went on “With you, I couldn’t stop your cancer. I could be your friend. I could make sure you were loved and taken care of, but your fate had been sealed. It was up to the doctors to save your life. Nothing I could have done would have saved you.”
Conor had taken off his sunglasses and was looking at me. He didn’t have to say it for me to hear it. I said, “And …With Des there was nothing for me to do. He accepted his fate, put it over to a higher power, and lived as long and as well as he could with the support and love of the children and the wife he adored and loved him back. The only thing I could do was support him. Let him know he was not forgotten and would be remembered as the best of men.”
The child who had been crying was now giving his mother a hug. The mother smiled as the little boy dashed down the path after his brother who was hanging upside down from one of the Banyans horizontal trunks.
I said “Every night on television, every day when I opened the New York Times the number one story was how many people had died from Covid, were dying from Covid and how the nitwit in the White House was suggesting we drink ammonia, take cow dewormers, and develop a method to bathe our organs with ultraviolet light. Millions were dying around the world, mass grave building was a cottage industry, and I could do nothing but sit at home, wash my hands, and wear a mask.”
I paused and breaking eye contact with Conor and gazed at this embodiment of life that had gathered under her multitude of branches, trunks, and roots. The children at play, the newlyweds, the tourists gawking, the bench sitters looking for relief from the sun.”
I went on “But Duke was different. I could have helped him. I could have made a difference and didn’t.”
“But could you have?”
“I could have tried harder.”
“And the chances are the result would have been the same. Why do you think his disease was any less deadly that your Moms, Desmond’s or mine? Just because it was a disease of the brain did not make it any less deadly. Just because some could survive by taking medication does not change a thing. Some people survive cancer when they take drugs. Others don’t. It is just the same. Medication helped him cope with life a little better, but the disease never went away. He made the choice not to take his medicine just like your father did when he decided to end dialysis. He made the decision to drink a bottle of vodka a day. He made those decisions to end his life. And no matter what you said or did nothing could have changed that. He wanted to go, and he did.”
”Then why do I feel like I could have done more. Should have done more.”
“I am not saying that you couldn’t have done more. Sure you could have. You could have gotten on an airplane and found him and dragged him to rehab. You could have spent hours on the phone with him when he was drunk and off his meds having endless convoluted conversations about his vision of life and the universe. Liam did a lot of that. There are endless things you could have done but, in the end, it may not have changed the outcome at all. Maybe postponed it a bit. He had a terminal disease. He took the treatments for as long as he could and when the cure became worse than the disease, he stopped treatment and died.”
“Do you really think he thought it out like that?”
“I don’t know. Knowing my son, it is a distinct possibility. He was getting no joy out of life. And just like your old man he decided on a shorter life with more joy than a longer life that gave him no pleasure.”
I looked down at my feet and made little circles in the sand with the toe of my shoe. I wanted to believe what Conor was telling me but putting bi-polar disorder and cancer under the same umbrella of terminal diseases was difficult. I had been taught to think of them differently. Cancer killed you. Bipolar disorder was just a mental problem. It was going to take time for me to equate the two. I said, “There is only one problem with your theory.”
Conor looked at me inquisitively and replied, “What is that?”
“You are one of the great bullshit artists of all time.”
Laughing my friend said “Well, there is that.”
I said, “I miss this. I miss you.”
“I know you do.”
“We talked every day.”
“We did.”
“About everything. From life’s little foibles to the dramady going on around us. We would always talk.”
“Yep.”
“Talking to myself is not nearly as much fun.”
“Of course not.”
Laughing I add “But what are you going to do?”
“Exactly.”
From out in the harbor an airhorn blasts. I look down at my watch. 4:15. I turn to Conor and say. “Gotta catch a boat.”
He replies, “The Sea Goddess? What kind of a name is that for a boat. Let alone one that does what it does.”
“Hey, I didn’t pick the boat. Your ex-wife did. I am just a long for the ride.”
“Typical Del. What do you want to bet that within fifteen minutes of getting on board she has told the captain our entire life story up to and including how she divorced me for cheating on her and that now she is doing the Christian thing by granting me a last request.”
“It’s a sucker bet.”
“Yeah it is.”
Reluctantly, I get up to go. My friend looks content to sit on the bench and I say “Will I see you on board?”
He replies, “Do I have a choice?”
As I walk away from the bench, gravel crunching under my feet, I turn and look back at my friend and brother in all but blood. I do an about face and walk back to the bench. Conor looks up and smiles and says “And…”
We both laugh and I say “I forgot to tell you something.”
“Is it that your days are little darker without me?”
Smiling, I say “That goes without saying, doesn’t it? But no. That is not what I was going to say.”
“Go on.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way. But there is one thing that this whole mishigas with your death and dying taught me about our friendship, maybe all real friendships, that I don’t think I would have learned if you hadn’t died.”
“And…”
“Stop it. But then again, maybe that is the point. After you died, I decided to make a list of all the ways over the years you had been a total asshole to me. I thought it might mitigate the pain a little bit. Help me cope with things a little bit better…”
“And.”
“Okay, now you are just being annoying. Things like lying to me about how you were hiding your money from Del. Refusing to admit to stepping out on your marriage even though you knew I would understand because I had told you of my own affair. Or, how it took you months to call me when you were sick. All of it made me angry and sad. But then I realized something. Actually, a couple of things.”
“What was that?”
“Thank you for that. “And “would have been so easy. First, I realized that despite all of those things. I still loved you. And would miss you for the rest of my life. I didn’t care. The people we love are full of flaws. It is the nature of being human. And you have only two choices. You can embrace those faults as part of the uniqueness of that person, what makes them special, and why you love them. Or, not. And, if you chose the latter then you are going to spend all your time trying to change what you loved from the beginning. If your successful in changing the person more than likely they won’t be the person you loved anymore. Or they won’t have changed and you will be frustrated. Either way, you are going to have a miserable time of it.”
“So never ask people to change?”
“Didn’t say that. People change not because you ask them to but because they want to. Giving those you love the space they need to be them and the encouragement to be who they aspire to be is all you can do. The rest is up to them. Which is what led me to my second realization.”
“Which was?”
“You were always the person I wanted to be. You had this unbelievable confidence and faith in yourself. You could walk into any room and absolutely own it. You were convinced, no matter what, that you would walk away with the biggest piece of pie, the prettiest girl, and someone else would pay the tab. Damn I wanted to be you but it also made me feel that their was something lacking in me as well., How come I couldn’t be like that? Why couldn’t I be more like Con? Am I making any sense?”
“Go on…”
“Well between your divorce from Del, the whole thing with Lil and your diagnosis and your adventures with brain cancer, you leaned on me. Inadvertently, you showed me how much you valued what I had to say, what value I brought to you and why you had been my friend for forty years. I may not have been able to do the things that you could do but I could always do things you could not. While I thought differently than you did, acted differently than you, that was okay. You valued that difference.”
Chuckling Con replies “And why should that surprise you? We have been friends a long time.”
“What surprised me is that all this time, when I wanted to be more like you, you wanted to be more like me. I, without trying, made you want to be a better version of yourself. It is why we are friends. We both saw things in each other that we wanted in the other’s life that we wanted in our own.”
“For example…”
“Nadine.”
“How is that?”
“I believe that my love affair with Nadine made you reconsider your own marriage. You saw what we had and realized what you didn’t have with Del. It made you question what you wanted and probably inspired you to look for something else. I will never forget your reaction to meeting my wife for the first time. You saw how in love we were and most importantly how gentle she was with me when she disagreed with me. How we treated each other with love and respect. You told me you wished you had that with Del. She was all saccharine and no sugar.”
“I remember that.”
“But it went further. I think that when you met Lil, you thought she would be your Nadine. They were both Latina, smart and willing to speak their mind in a way that would not put you back on your heels.”
“So you are responsible for that shit show.”
“You can’t foist that one on me. I am just saying that is what you thought you were getting. The vetting process was all you. You saw what you wanted to see. But all this helped me look at our buddyhood in a way I never had before. I never took the time to think “Why does Con want to be my friend.” You just were. But the last few years have been rough. I had to think why am I doing all this? You were a handful and dominated everything in my life. You took time away from Nadine. You were a constant source of dialog with Mom. I had to defend you to your children and others and clean up your messes with Lil and Del. You could have relied on George or your boys anyone but me. Why me? I knew why I was there. Friends show up. But why did you want me to show up? And here is the real shit. I know. I know. That if I were in the position you were in you wouldn’t have done nearly as much.”
“Okay…”
“But it didn’t matter. Because that is who I am and that is who you are. You valued me and it made me value myself more. “
“Isn’t that what friendship is all about?”
“Sure. I guess. But if Covid has done nothing else it has given us far more time to think. Long walks and time alone helped me think through this. So thank you.”
“For what, dying?”
“Nice. You know that is not what I mean. I mean thank you for believing me for all those years. For taking from me the parts of who and what I am and incorporating them into who and what you wanted to be. It made me feel seen and valued. I never got the chance to thank you for that and I should have. But I also want to thank you for all the things I stole from you. No one had a better sense of fun than you did.”
“Hows that?”
“Hmm. Do you remember when we were in High School and we skipped school to go and spend the day at Six Flags?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t remember much about that day but I do remember you on the Kingdom Kai Roller Coaster. It was an enormous coaster with twists, turns, loopdy loops and, barrel rolls. I was scared shitless and could barely breathe but not you. No doubt it scared you too but you screamed your lungs on the entire time as if this was the greatest moment in your life. The minute we got off of that ride I wanted to go and find some nice shady place to lie down. You would have none of that. You wanted to get back in that hour long line and do it all over again. You “Coned” me into doing again.”
Puzzled Con says “Okay?”
“Don’t you see that is your legacy to me. That when you find joy in life seize it and scream with delight until you cannot scream any more. Enjoy the ride while you can because you don’t know how many more runs you are going to get. “
Con looks at his watch and says “Don’t you have some place to be.”
Looking at my own watch I say “Oh shit” and head off at a half trot towards the Marina.
As I leave the shade of the tree, I hear Conor yelling to me. I can’t hear what is saying but I yell back “I love you man!” but I don’t think he hears me over the sounds of life under the Banyan Tree.
I am sitting on one the many park benches located around the tree. In preparation for what is to come, I am wearing a pair of Maui Jim blue mirrored sunglasses, a well-loved Red Sox cap and a black t-shirt that has written on its front “Hunter S. Thompson, authors of Hell’s Angel’s, Fear and Loathing and Las Vegas, A Savage Journey To The Heart of the American Dream” below which is an iconic Ralph Steadman illustration in black and white of the driving in desert with his faithful companion Dr. Gonzo.
This tree is one of my favorite places in the world. I first encountered it nearly twenty years ago on my first trip to Hawaii. On the eve of going to Maui for the first time, Conor, who had been there many times, told me that I should go out of my way to visit the tree in Lahaina. This was completely out of character for him. Telling me a great restaurant to eat at, a good bar for a Martini, the right beach for watching girls were all part of his repertoire. Visit a tree? Not so much. He was not a tree hugger. It was so out of character that I had to see what had inspired him.
The day my girlfriend and I went to Lahaina was a particularly hot day with temperatures in the low 90’s, a cloudless sky and little wind to cool one down. Katherine had been eager to melt a few credit cards shopping the stores along Front Street. Knowing she got a lot of joy out of this type of activity and I so little that it would likely ruin her experience, I volunteered to go in search of the Banyan tree and wait for her there while she finished her retail therapy.
The tree was not hard to find, it was just a few blocks down Front Street and was immense. It took up a full city block and looked as if it had been designed by Rube Goldberg with an able assist by Dr. Seuss and a final edit by Escher. It’s sprawling canopy supported, multiple trunks, aerial roots that descended from the branches into the ground and a network of branches so interwoven it was impossible to follow their path. It was an amazing sight to see but that is not what struck me the most. It had a presence. It was an entity and like the tree in Shel Silverstein’s classic adult children’s book it seemed as if it wanted to give joy to those who saw it. Its shade was filled with the laughter of children playing under it and not a frown in sight for the adults who lingered underneath.
I called my father from a bench under the tree that day and described it to him and the joy I felt sitting under its branches. Eighteen months later on a trip to Maui with my parents I took him to visit the tree. My father, whose happiest moments of childhood were spent playing in the forest near his grandmother’s home in Fahrafeld, Austria, and still thought of trees as friends, said, after circumnavigating the Banyan, in his typical understated fashion“You weren’t wrong about this tree.”
It is the memory of that first visit and the visit with the old man that brought me to the tree today. The last eighteen months of pandemic had been a journey of loss, and sorrow. My trip so far had been anything but relaxing and comforting. Confronting your ghosts rarely is. What was to come later that day promised no respite. I needed an oasis of comfort and peace. I hoped by sitting underneath this miracle of endurance and survival would give me the resolve to complete the task that brought us to this island in the first place.
My bench is near the original trunk of the Banyan. I watch a group of small children play hide and go seek among the multitude of trunks. Parents, their faces reflecting the joy of their children, look on in amusement with iPhones poised to catch every moment for their feeds and personal archive. A newlywed couple sits close to each other on a nearby bench holding hands, kissing, and cuddling. Do they see the tree as a metaphor for their new life together and the legacy they hope to create. A single tree branching out over time becoming many and immortal. Like the tree my parents created with my brother, sister, and me. Only my offshoot would have no branches and would not grow. I am eternally grateful for the love I found with Nadine, but it had come too late for children. A fact that has weighed heavily on me over the course of the pandemic.
These dark thoughts will not do. I do not need them today. I pull my baseball cap down, lean back on the bench and close my eyes. It has been a long day already. I napped when I returned from Haleakala, but it did little to relieve my weariness. I need to meditate and let my darker thoughts drift away. Back in college, when I learned Transcendental Meditation, I had been taught to repeat my mantra in the rhythm that called to you until a thought carried you away. When you became aware that you were losing your refrain you return to the rhythm of the mantra until another thought or idea brought you somewhere new. I am not an ardent follower of TM it is useful when my thoughts are gripped in a whirlpool of despair, sadness or hurt. It doesn’t provide answers or solve problems but allows moments of peace to reduce the problems I think of as mountains to hills.
The first thought that drifts into my mind after I began repeating my mantra is Nadine. It is my first trip to Brazil after meeting her on an eighteen-day cruise up the coast of Brazil and crossing to Morocco, Portugal and Italy. We had both been on the cruise to find a little peace after being prime care givers to our fathers. It was a small break in our battle to make our dad’s final days easier. That peace would end the minute we left the ship. We were both returning to goodbyes and heartache. It made our romance torrid and intense. Its afterglow left us wondering whether this was just a shipboard dalliance destined to fade and crumble like a rose placed in a book from a forgotten paramour or a true love affair that would fill the emptiness in our lives. Just weeks after goodbyes on the docks of Savona, Italy I flew to Rio to find out. I was nervous as I left customs. What would I find when I walked through those swinging doors where loved ones anxiously awaited the arriving passengers. At first, I could not see her among the throng and then she stepped forward looking radiantly beautiful with an incandescent smile that immediately erased my anxiety and answered every question I had about our relationship. It is an indelible memory. The one I tapped when our Covid enforced separation seemed insufferable.
“Buddy Boy!”
I opened my eyes. Not entirely to my surprise, sitting next to me is Conor. He is wearing a very loud Hawaiian shirt patterned with amply endowed topless hula dancers, floral board shorts, reflective aviator sunglasses and a trucker hat with an image of Hunter Thompson smoking a cigarette in a long holder with the motto “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
I said, “I figured you would show up here.”
Grinning from ear to ear he said “I did tell you about the place.”
“You did. But that isn’t the biggest reason I thought you might show up here this afternoon.”
“Was it because I told you I would see you yesterday morning when I was swimming?”
“Partially…” my voice dropping off at the end.
Smiling he said “And…”
I start to laugh. “You know, every time you say that it makes me laugh.”
Laughing himself he says, “The night in Venice.”
“Of course, the night in Venice! Del, Phoebe, you and I were completely blitzed and you got it your mind that we had to find this disco and dance. The rest of us were too drunk to argue and you led us on this forced march through the labyrinth of old city streets, map firmly in hand over one canal and then another, down dark and creepy streets until we were completely lost. Del finally insisted you ask someone for directions, and we watched from a distance as you stood on the top of one of these arched stone bridges over a canal and asked a stranger for directions. All we could hear was your voice booming “And?” repeatedly. Maybe a dozen times. When you finally finished talking to the good Samaritan who had given you directions and came walking back to us we asked you what he had told you and you said “I have no idea I don’t speak Italian.”
“We never did find that disco did we.”
“No, we didn’t but we managed to have a good time anyway. I seem to remember us drinking a little bit more and then leading a conga line through a flooded Piazza San Marco.”
“We created a lot of memories together didn’t we budrow.”
With the sadness that nostalgia often brings I say, “Yeah we did.”
Conor smiles and replies “You didn’t answer the question why did you think I would put in an appearance here?”
“Two reasons. First, there is not much time left.”
With a twisted smile he nods his head and says, “Well there is that.” Chuckling he adds “And.”
I smile too and reply “I talked to Duke this morning.”
“Oh? What did he have to say for himself.”
“I did most of the talking.”
“Well, there is a surprise.”
“Nice. Eat me!”
Conor laughs and says “Seriously, what did you talk about?”
I looked down at my feet for a second before answering him and said “I told him that I was pissed off at him. He had so much to offer and he just gave up. And while I can not grasp what was going on in his bipolar effected brain he didn’t understand the hurt and destruction his suicide created.”
“And…”
“Don’t start that again.”
“Well?”
“I told him. I was sorry.”
“For what?”
“Remember, after you first told me about Duke’s diagnosis you told me that Delilah had wanted to turn him out until he got his act together. And you wouldn’t let her. You said you know your son. That the traditional way of treating his alcoholism would not work for him. Turning your back on him, would just makes him more determined than ever to continue the path he was on if for no other reason than to prove everyone wrong. You knew that because that is the way you would react and Duke, at least in that regard, was exactly like you. With Duke you needed a more bespoke approach. One that helped him exorcise his demons and put-up guardrails that kept him on the right path.”
“I remember.”
“Instead of listening to your advice about your son I took my lead from Liam and Del. They asked me to practice “tough love.” It was a mistake. Liam loved his brother and wanted to do his best but didn’t have the life experience or tool set to deal with his problems. Del who as much as she loved Duke never understood him. They asked me not to speak with Duke unless he was sober and getting treatment. Instead of fighting them, which would have been the right thing to do, I went along with them.”
Conor took off his sunglasses so he could look at me eye to eye and said, “Why did you do do that.”
I looked down, avoiding his glare and said “You mean why did I do the easy thing, the nice thing, instead of taking on the challenge of doing the right thing, the kind thing?”
“Your words.”
“Oh, I have great excuses. My mother and two of my best friends had just died. There was a global pandemic killing millions. Nadine was thousands of miles away. I was alone and didn’t have the strength to take on another emotional challenge.”
“But?”
“Cold comfort. At least to me. They are just obstacles. Little fairy tales that one tells oneself, so you don’t feel bad. They don’t absolve me from not doing more. I should have found the strength…”
“And…”
“Always with the ands…And I thought I was better than that. Stronger than that. But I was not. And my lack of will may be understandable to others. It isn’t for me.”
Con nods and puts a hand on my shoulder and says “Sure you could have done more. Everyone can always do a little more. Even in situations where you feel like you have done everything that you possibly can at some point you realize that you weren’t creative enough. You lacked imagination or followed the wrong path. You were not strong enough to try one more thing. There will always be something more you can have done. Those are the should haves, could haves and would haves everyone faces when the shit hits the fan. My question to you is why are you flagellating yourself over being imperfect? Aren’t we all. Lord, knows I certainly was. Sure, you made a promise to me to look out for him. And you did. Could you have done more? I guess. But would the outcome have been different? I don’t know. You don’t know. But the truth is Danny, you were not the only one who should have been looking out for my boy. Del was there. Duke is her son. I told her the same thing I told you. She should have done more than hoping he would suddenly discover the path to sobriety and his mental health would spring spontaneously from prayer and tough love. She should have gotten on an airplane, found Duke and dragged him by his hair to rehab. She didn’t. She failed as a mother. This is not just about accepting your own responsibility. You are really good at that. You fuck up. You learn. You move on. That is you. There is more here. What is it?”
The sky had turned crystalline blue with cirrus clouds painted in peachy orange, crimson, and deep violet. On the horizon a bright yellow disk emerged above a roiling sea of cumulus clouds that obscured the ocean below. The caldera was now bathed in the glow of the new day and its peaks and valleys accented in pastel shades. It had happened every day for the last million years but was brand new to me. It was by far the most beautiful sunrise I had ever seen.
I turned to Duke who was still standing in the shadows of the Visitor’s Center’s eve and said “Well, it’s no green flash but it’s pretty all right.”
He laughed and said “Amazing, right?”
“Amazing. Remarkable. The most beautiful sunrise I have ever seen. As ancient as this mountain. Yet brand new. It makes you feel so connected to the here and now but somehow it makes you feel intimate with the universe at the same time. Does that make any sense to you or am I just being an old guy speechifying.”
“No. You got it right.”
“But it begs a question.”
“What’s that?”
I took a beat and asked, “Why did you give it up?”
It was a Thursday evening, and I was sitting on the couch in my home office, a glasss with three fingers of Tullamore Dew in one hand, and the television remote in the other. All I wanted to do was veg out on the couch and do as little thinking and feeling as possible.
It had been another rough day clearing out my parents’ home. Not physically, my goal for today had been to pack up Mom’s study. The challenging part at least initially had been that office was her. It was as she left it. Every item in its place. Her favorite tchotchkes and nicknacks arranged just so. Pictures of her children and grandchildren strategically placed for optimal viewing. Her office chair still carried her scent. Every item was a reminder she was gone and not coming back.
Which is why I was on the couch with a glass full of three ounces of Ireland’s amnesia juice and very reluctant to pick up the phone when it rang. But the screen said it was from Duke and if he wanted to talk, I needed to listen.
I said, “Hey Duke, what’s up?”
He replied slurring his words “Not much Uncle Danny. I just wanted to call and tell you I love you. You are the best Uncle in the world.”
I put down my drink and I said “Thanks buddy. I appreciate it. But how come you have been drinking?”
“What makes you think I have been drinking” he said with a touch of belligerence.
“Come on. We are not going to play this game. We love each other too much to bullshit. What is going on?”
Duke replied “Morgan’s parents threw us out of their home. Well, they threw me out and she came with me. Same diff.”
I asked, “Why did they throw you out of the house Duke?”
He paused. The same type of pause Conor used to have when he was trying to figure out how much of the truth he wanted to tell me. “Well, he said, I wasn’t following house rules and I disagreed with him about that and then he invited me to leave.”
He and Morgan had been invited into her parents’ home under two conditions: 1) They needed to take their meds. 2) They could not drink. Conor’s death had created an emotional crisis and Duke then Morgan had found their way to the bottle and shortly thereafter due to their altered state had made the decision to stop their meds. It did not take long for her parents to discover the rules had been broken. A confrontation ensued in which Duke became belligerent and argumentative. There was a physical altercation. The police were called. Duke was arrested and spent the night in jail. When he was released, he, Morgan, and Pete the cat returned to Pasadena where they could do what they wanted.
But, I knew none of that then. I said “Duke, okay you are at home now. How are you two taking care of each other? Do you have enough money? Food? What can I do to help?”
“It’s all good. The University is still paying me my stipend and I am doing tutoring over Zoom. Morgan has money too. So, we are fine money wise.”
“Okay. “
“I just needed to know that you were around. That I could call if I felt like I needed a hug.”
“Always.” And after a momentary hesitation I added “You know Duke, I am here if you want to talk about your Dad.”
“Yeah. I am not ready to do that yet.”
“It might help.”
“I know. I am just not there yet but I promise when I am, we will talk.”
I told him I loved him. He said, “Right back at you.” and we ended the call. I called Liam and I said, “I just got off the phone with your brother.”
“Yeah.”
“You know what is going on with him?”
“I do. He called yesterday. He told me what had happened.”
“Was he drunk when he called you.”
“I don’t know if he was drunk or not, but he had certainly been drinking.”
“You know what I mean, and it doesn’t matter whether he was drunk or not. He shouldn’t be drinking.”
“Sorry. Yeah. You are right.”
A little exasperated I said “Well, have you talked to your mom about this? Have you come up with a plan of action or anything?”
” We talked. She said that she told him that she loved him but wouldn’t talk to him while he was drunk. That when he sobered up, she would happily speak with him.”
“Tough love. I get it. Do you think that is the right approach? Your old man never thought that approach would work with Duke. He said he was too stubborn for tough love. It would just make him dig in his heels harder.”
“Yeah. I don’t know. I kinda of see both sides.”
“This really isn’t my place to say but don’t you think it would be a good idea for your mom to get on an airplane and see him face to face. Perhaps convince him to go to rehab.”
“Duke won’t go. I talked to him about it. He is scared shitless of being locked in a place with a bunch of people he doesn’t know who have been living on the streets. He believes the only thing rehab would do for him is give him Covid.”
“That sounds like him. Your Mom has money now. Maybe she could help foot the bill for one of those smaller rehab facilities where they send celebrities…”
“She won’t do it. She calls it “throwing good money after bad.”
“I don’t Liam. Making sure that your son stays alive is probably the best use for money. Whatever, something has to be done. And I am willing to do whatever you and your mom decide. If that is tough love, so be it but in my heart of hearts, I don’t believe that will work. I don’t know. Maybe it is just because I have lost my mom so recently, but I think that a mother’s hug will go a lot further in getting Duke back on track than tough love. In person will always work better than Facetime. Don’t you think?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I could go either way, but I just don’t know.”
I understood my nephew’s confusion. There was no right answer. There were no assurances whatever course of action he and Delilah chose would be the right one. There may be no answer at all because at the end of the day the only person who could make the decision to stay sober and take their meds was Duke. I said “Liam, remember what Yogi Berra said.”
“He said a lot of things.”
Laughing I said “Yeah, he did. The one I was thinking about though was “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” I could you tell the back story on that but I have always taken it to mean that when you are faced with a decision make one. Maybe you’re right. Maybe you’re wrong. But at least you are moving forward and if you end up making the wrong decision then with any luck you can backtrack and make the right one. “
“Okay.”
“What I am saying is whatever decision you and your mom make just let me know and I will take your lead.”
Two days later I got a text from Liam. They had discussed Duke’s situation and decided on tough love. They asked me to respect their wishes and feeling like I had no other choice and much to my later regret, I agreed.
Duke called me a week later. He was monumentally drunk spouting a theory about how people would not be able to take the isolation much longer and food riots were likely to start and that he hoped that I was prepared. I said “Duke, you know that I love you like a son. And everything you are saying to me could be completely true. But I cannot believe a word of it because you are drunk off your ass and clearly off your meds. “
He replied with anger “What the fuck does that have to do with believing what I am saying.”
I said as calmly as I could manage. “Credibility is based on a sober assertation of the facts. You are not sober so how can I believe you?”
“Touche Uncle Dan.”
I said “You know I love you more than life itself. I will do anything I can to help you get sober. Tell me what you need, and I will get it for you. Tell me that you want to go to rehab but you want me to take you, I am on the next plane regardless of the pandemic. But I can’t make you want to stop drinking or take your meds. That is up to you. And I know it sucks but that burden is one only you can lift. You understand.”
“Yup. I know.”
“But Duke the one thing I won’t do anymore is talk to you while you are drunk. It empowers your drinking, and I can’t be a party to you destroying yourself. You understand.”
“Sure.”
“If you want to talk. I am here. 24/7. The only thing is the price of our conversation is you being sober.”
“Okay.”
I said, “I love you Duke” and ended the call.
We never spoke on the phone again. He would call and I would let it go to voice mail. He began texting me. Wild tomes like:
“Music makes sense and doesn’t sound like noise or nonsense to us because our ears are capable of processing the mathematical ratios of frequencies, in tons and tons of independent sources at once. For example, a simple pentatonic scale of five notes for one octave breaks down into ratios of 1/5 … btw all human cultures came up with that scale first as far as we know. Observational. All of this calculation happens before it hits the speech centers of our brain, or we would hear only noise. So… like it or not, by the virtue of just hearing alone… you’re making a zillion calculations a second. It puts any human language so far to shame it isn’t even funny. We currently have the ability to be supercomputers. Seriously. We just use it for artistic pleasure not normal data transfer. It blows vision away even for the most tone deaf person. “
or
“Danny, I think you might be needed. In WW2, the UK started drafting 50–60-year-old men to fight on the front line before the US stepped in. Extraordinary times called for extraordinary measures. These are extraordinary times. You may or may not see coincidences soon. They are not accidental. They don’t advertise. Your location, life, loyalty, and linguistics kind of make you ideal for many things. So… sorry. Tag you are it. Dream team time. You won’t be any good front line in a war. But your brain… I mean come on dude. Your beautiful brain and true as gold soul. “
I didn’t respond to his texts. I had made a promise and was determined to keep it. Sadly, his texts became more erratic.
“Breathe buddy. I love you. All gonna be ok. How’s credibility going now? If lacking, I WILL send the aliens. But I do need a phone hug. The wonderful things about Conors is that Conors are wonderful things. So are Dannys. Dad ALSO always said he hated games because life was more than enough of a game. Tried to tell Liam. No dice. Really wish I could make him see it. He is needed. And especially Hadley. Maybe that’s your job. Liam isn’t a reader. Especially not sci fi.
I seriously don’t know how or why, but Dad is in my devices and the airwaves. 100% sure. When I told him, briefly before death on Skype, that I was going to be ok, we locked eyes. Steely. He was back. And he smiled an amazing smile. More to tell on that one but it makes me cry.
Later, Liam texted me and told me that dad had raised his arms to heaven and let out an incredible, deep sigh, as if a great weight had been lifted from him, and he suddenly became more coherent. Oddly so. And Liam told me it made him believe in something out there. For sure. It MEANT that all those years of deception. His dad. And so on. Would be passed on to me. I’m sorry you couldn’t know while he was corporeal. I’ll work on letting you chill with Robot dad but absolutely no promises. Even if successful it’ll be decades. But we have eternity to try. Lol. Call.”
His comment about needing a hug broke me. It was all too easy for me to imagine what it was like to be alone and mourning the death of his Dad. It broke me. I needed a hug too. I texted him.
“Duke, I love you and cherish you. Nothing would make me happier than giving you a hug or talking to you on the phone. But it would be like putting a band aid on an arterial wound. It might make me feel like I was doing something positive when in fact I was getting in the way of a treatment that could be useful. It is clear to me that you are having challenges with your meds and perhaps other things. These are your burdens only you can carry them. I encourage you to take hold and carry them. When you do, I will be happy to hug you and talk to you but doing so now will not help you. I beg you to find your way to treatment.”
At the time, it seemed the right response for his text. I thought it was the kind thing to say. His response was to send me a selfie. He was wearing a colorful Hawaiian shirt, sporting a full blonde beard, dark Ray Ban aviator sunglasses, smoking a Pall Mall cigarette and giving me the peace sign. It was a coded message. One he knew I would understand. The cigarettes were a reference to my favorite Kurt Vonnegut quote “Even though I have been chain smoking Pall Malls since I was fifteen, I still think I have enough wind to run and catch happiness.” The rest was a tribute to his father and his favorite author Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. It meant, when the going gets weird, the weird go pro.”
That was the last text I received from Duke.
Three weeks later I was walking in the woods with Fenway. It was a beautiful sunlit early afternoon in the middle of peak leave season. The trees were conducting their annual gaudy display, and I was in as good spirits as I had been in months. Donald Trump was down in the polls, a Covid vaccine was undergoing emergency trials and looked like it might help bring an end to all this madness. I was savoring “Fanfare for the Common Man” by Aaron Copeland on my earbuds, music that always brought me calm joy and peace. Fennie was expressing her inner puppy by dashing in and out of a particularly large pile of leaves. It was a beautiful day. The type you remembered for a lifetime and one I would never forget for other reasons.
My phone buzzed. Its haptics letting me know I had a call. I had no intention of answering it but but when I saw it was Liam, I answered, “What’s up Shrimpy?”
It took months for us to get the full picture of Dukes final days.
In the weeks leading up to his death he and Morgan had been drinking very heavily, a bottle to a bottle and half of vodka every day. Duke developed a theory “the military” was up to something nefarious. He tweeted “Nothing to see here. I am just a man and a patriot doing my duty. No valor. I’m nobody. We deployed a small star over the Pacific last night to demonstrate.” It was followed by a clip from “Inglorious Bastards” where Brad Pitt is looking for volunteers and says “We will be cruel to the Germans, and through our cruelty they will know who we are. And they will find the evidence of our cruelty in the disemboweled, dismembered, and disfigured bodies of their brothers we leave behind us.”
Off their meds and the wildly drunk couple drove to Camp Pendleton, one of the largest Marine bases in the world. They tried to breach the gates with their car. The attempt failed and when the MP’s tried to pry them from the car they turned tail and fled at high speed. About a mile from the base, they lost control of the car, and it flipped several times before ending up in a culvert next to the road. When the MP’s reached them Duke, completely naked, was trying to crawl away. Morgan, also naked, was unconscious in the passenger seat covered in her own urine and feces.
They were not arrested. Whether that was because the MP’s lacked authority to do so off base or another reason is unclear. What it meant was when they were taken to the hospital they were treated as normal patients and not handcuffed to their beds. Duke escaped. Why he did this unclear. Perhaps he was frightened of being placed in a 5150 psychiatric hold or some other reason we will never know. Somehow, without clothes or money he made it back to the motel room in which he and Morgan had been staying. There he showered, dressed, and was crossing the parking lot when he paused for a moment before falling face first onto the pavement. Paramedics were called. They tried to save him but their efforts failed and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Duke’s autopsy concluded that he died of liver failure caused by chronic alcoholism. He was thirty years old. It also showed that at the time of his death there were no alcohol or drugs in his system. It meant that his attempt to breach Camp Pendleton was done while he was sober. You don’t attempt to breach a heavily secure military installation without understanding the consequences. The guards will open fire on you. It was suicide by cop but on a grand scale.
The yellow orb of the sun sat on the lip of the horizon bathing the world with the light of a new day. I turned to Duke barely visible in the deep shadows of the visitor hut’s eaves and shaking my head said “I don’t understand. You had everything. You were smart, good looking, charming, funny. The whole fucking package. Why give up? Why?”
“We have had this conversation before. Many times.”
He was right. In the year since his death I had often found him lurking nearby and I always had the same question for him. But nothing he said made any sense to me. I said “I know. I know. I know. But tell me again. Isn’t that why I am here.”
“I am sure. But nothing I will ever say to you will make you appreciate the pain I felt. Before Dad’s death I had been on the edge more than once. You know that. Life was equal parts overwhelming pain and rapturous joy. When he died, it tipped me over the edge. There was just the pain. Ending the pain and moving on to what was next seemed far more appealing than living the life I was living. And you know I thought I discovered that after this life ends, we join the universe. That I was ready for the bigger adventure because no one was seeing what I was seeing.”
I said, “And is that what happened?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. Besides Uncle Danny that isn’t what you really want to know.”
“Oh?”
“What you really want to know is whether you could have changed things. If you had done something differently would there have been an outcome that you could have lived with more easily? Right?”
“You wrote to me. You asked me for a hug. A simple fucking hug. It would have been so simple to give it to you. Something that would have given us both joy. But I didn’t give it to you. Instead, I went along with the flow and did what was easy. The nice thing. A plan that your dad told me would never work with you. If I flown to California and given you that hug and demanded you go to rehab would we be here now?”
“You want absolution. You know that is not mine to give.”
Angrily I replied “Then whose is it? “
Duke, pointing at me, replied “You know the answer to that.”
We stare at each other in silence for a moment when he says “Gotta go. Marisol is on her way over here. But Uncle Danny you need to follow your own advice.”
“And what’s that?”
“Be kind to yourself “and then proceeded to walk down the trail into the caldera and towards the rising sun.
I yelled to him “Will I see you later?”
Without turning around, he waved and shouted back “Of course!”
When Marisol reaches me, I am looking across a sea of golden clouds at the snow-covered peak of Mauna Loa. She stands there with me in silence for a few moments before asking, “Worth the trip?”
On the eastern horizon, light grey had been replaced with bands of bronze, orange and yellow. The barren landscape of Haleakala’s caldera absorbed the colors. Its boulders, crags and craters looked as if they had been painted by Peter Max or any of the psychedelic painters. Far off in the distance on the island of Hawaii the grey shadow of Mauna Loa emerged from the darkness. Below us was a sea of tied dyed puffy white clouds that obscured the ocean but gave a sense that you were standing in heaven or the very least Olympus. A place for the gods.
“It’s amazing Duke.”
From the shadows of the visitor’s center’s entrance my nephew replied, “You haven’t seen anything yet.”
I turn to look at him. He was barely visible from where he stood. I said, “Thank you for this but I am still angry with you.”
“Why shouldn’t you be. I didn’t listen.”
I was not fine.
It seems so obvious now. Within three weeks of each other both your mother and best friend die. Two of the three people who formed the tripod of your support were gone. The people you turned to most for advice, comfort were dead and while Nadine, the tent pole that held kept you upright remained, she was also six thousand miles away.
In normal times I would have distracted myself from my loss. But where could I hide? Newspapers, television and the internet were an endless flow of the death and despair of the Covid pandemic. The bulldozing of mass graves in Sao Paolo. The massive death of the elderly in institutions meant to care for them. Children trying to learn without school rooms and play with their friends while alone in their rooms. The blithe denial of science and fact from Donald Trump and his acolytes. Normal human contact has stopped. No office, no gym, no trips to the grocery. My only social engagement, if it happened at all, was walking Fennie, and waving at the other mask wearing members of the poop bag posse.
It had started, as had so many days since my mother’s death, at my parent’s house. I would go there every day to work on the process of organizing the home in preparation for getting it sold. Most of the simple work had been done. Mom’s first edition book collection had been catalogued, boxed, and transported to my basement until we could decide on how to divide them among the three of us. Her clothes were gathered and delivered to the local Good Will organization. Items that had no value and were not desired by us were placed in a skiff we had placed in the driveway. That day, I had begun the process of going through the boxes, steamer trunks, and suitcases that contained thousands of family photographs.
My goal had been to identify what it is that we had before turning them over to Legacybox.com for digitization so we all could own our family’s pictorial heritage. I thought this would be a simple task. How hard is it to look at photographs, note what you have found, and repackage them? I had not factored in how emotionally raw I was from the death of mom, Con, and the disintegration of the world I knew and the lack of human contact. Every box I opened wore on my brittle psychological state whether they were pictures of my dad as a child in Vienna before the war, or my siblings and I in scenes common from any childhood like birthday parties, holidays, and life events such as bar mitzvahs, graduations, and weddings. All reminders of a simpler, better more humane world when the ones I loved were still here and hugs were only an ask away.
What finally had stopped me and put me into an emotional tailspin, was finding a scrapbook my then nineteen-year-old mother had put together about her and dad’s courtship. There was a picture of my twenty-three-year-old father smiling and looking like he belonged in GQ taken on the day they met. Playbills from shows they had seen together. Even a silly picture booth strip with each making silly faces at each other for the camera. But it was not a photograph that tripped my emotional circuit breaker. It was a Western Union telegram my Dad had sent Mom on the anniversary of their first meeting. It read “Hopelessly, ineluctable modality of the visible, auditory, tactile, and proprioceptive on September 5, 1948, plus one year. I miss you very very much. Hope we have many many more Love Zach.” It evoked my parents’ sixty-four-year journey together perfectly and left me desperate for just one more moment with them. It also sent me scurrying for the door as I could take no more.
Our townhome development was built on the site of a former farm directly adjacent to the Passaic River Park, a thousand acres of untouched woodland and river in the heart of suburbia. Trails meandered through the park and close to the river. It is where, as a boy, I would go on canoeing expeditions with the day camp I attended or go on short hikes with my father when he needed exercise or Mom ordered us out of the house. It is where Fenway and I would often ramble when the confines of the house became unbearable, or the day was too pretty to stay inside.
When I got home from my parents’ house, I decided what Fennie and I needed was a walk in the woods that still held the shadows of my childhood. It was a beautiful sun filled late summer day. The type of day mom would have described as positively Swiss as the oppressive heat and humidity of July and August had been replaced with an early glimpse of the fall. I thought exercise and the beauty of nature to help dim the sadness and sense of loss the photographs had created.
When we arrived at the park, I let Fenway off her lead so she could romp, play, and explore the woods at her own pace and interests. Strictly speaking, this was forbidden. But one of the few benefits of the pandemic was there were not a lot of people about to tsk tsk about these flagrant violations of the rules. When I heard other people, I called Fennie, she was never far away, and put on her lead so the folks I encountered were none the wiser. The trail we followed was one that shadowed the river’s bank. I found the flow of water soothing and relaxing and Fenway loved splashing in the shallows her joint heritage of Labrador and Poodle fully expressing itself.
Fifteen minutes into our walk just after Fenway had been for her third splash in the river I saw through the trees and the brush that lined the river bank a tall young man making his way on the trail in front of us. He was dressed oddly wearing a pair of khaki-colored shorts that resembled those worn by British forces during the second world war, a dark blue polo shirt and brown ankle high hiking boots. He had a branch in his hands that he was using as a staff to help navigate the rougher parts of the trail. There was a familiarity to him I could not place. None the less I called to Fenway to “come” so I could put her back on lead.
Fennie is a good dog. She is smart and when you talk to her, which I do often, she looks at you with her dark brown eyes intent on understanding every word that you said. On occasion she would pause before obeying one of my “commands” as if processing whether my request was valid, but she always complied. This time she did not. Instead, she went bounding down the trail in hot pursuit of the man with the walking stick. I took off after her. After about a quarter mile the trail emptied into a small field with shoulder high grass which made it impossible for me to see my dog. In near panic, I picked up the pace.
Five minutes later, and in a state of near panic, I found her and the man sitting on a small concrete bench in a small grove of trees that overlooked a small rapids in the river. My bad dog was laying at the feet of the man, raspberry colored tongue hanging out looking incredibly pleased with herself. I was about to scold her when the man looked up at me and smiled. It was my father. Not the familiar dad of my childhood or even the one I had grown to know as a man during our journeys together. It was the twenty-two-year-old whose picture I had seen in my mother’s scrap book a few hours before.
I was comfortable in our silence. Over the years he and I had gone on adventures to Israel, Alaska, and Austria where we spent weeks alone with each other. When he got sick there were endless hours of sitting together often in silence. We knew each enough well enough that quiet did not bother us. I did not feel the world crushing me. The constant threat of Covid, ever present, was a shadow. Mom’s and Conor’s deaths, as devastating as they were, lay easier with me. For the first time in months, I was at peace with the universe.
A male mallard duck with its gaudy yellow, blue, and green markings gently drifted by on the river and I turned to Dad and said “I never thought you would come back for a visit. When you died, I thought that there would be so much new to discover that you would set out to explore it all and never look back. I thought you would forget all about us.”
He turned his head and smiled and said, “Not possible.”
Trying in vain not to tear up I said “Thank-you.”
He remained smiling and impassive. I knew this expression. He was saying I did not need to thank him. That is what you do for the ones you love. You show up. If you do that, everything else takes care of itself.
In the distance, I heard a dog barking. Fenway sat up in an alert pose, head pointed in the direction of the sound, ready to challenge any dog who came her way. I quickly bent over and snapped on her lead. When I looked up, Pops was gone.
The sky is now grey. A foreshadow of the dawn to come. You can see things more sharply now. On my immediate right is the Haleakala Observatory. Seeing it makes me geek out a bit. It is the fifth highest observatory in the world and sits in the middle of the ocean far from any human-caused contaminants. That, and its location near the equator allows it to “see” parts of the universe not visible anywhere else on earth. It was this observatory that first observed a spot a cigar shaped object over a thousand meters long and a third as wide and moving at an incredible 197,000 miles moving through our solar system. They named it Oumuamua or scout in Hawaiian and researchers around the globe theorize it could be a probe sent from another star to examine our solar system.
This is exactly the type of thing Duke and I would love to discuss, argue, or just kick around. One of us would take the position that Ourmaumua was an alien spacecraft and the other would argue the opposite. It was just a piece of cosmic junk which happened to be in the neighborhood. We would argue back in forth. Not to see who was right but for the fun of the intellectual argument it produced. So nerdy. So, missed.
I hear “You know what Douglas Adams said?” I do not bother to turn to see who is speaking. I know. I reply “What is that?
“In the beginning the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely considered a very bad move.”
I laugh and say “You know more about the universe than I do these days. What do you think? Was it a bad move?”
“Oh, I don’t know. The universe isn’t that bad a place once you get to know it. I mean it has its rough spots. You can’t please everyone. But then again that is not the point. Overall, I would give it a solid B plus.”
I turn and face Duke and say, “I was wondering when you would show up.”
“I did tell you about this place.”
Laughing I say, “You did. You said, that experiencing the dawn of a new day here rivals any place on the planet.” Smiling I add “But I have not seen the sunrise yet, so it is hard to make a fair evaluation.”
“The sheep might be black on the other side?”
“Exactly that.”
I turn and look at my nephew. He has a big toothy grin on his face, clearly delighting in the fact that he thinks he has surprised me. He, at, 6’4”, is one inch taller than his brother one something he rarely lets Liam forget. Blonde, he has the familial eye twinkle of his father and grandfather in his eye. The one that always makes you think that a bit of mischief is in the offing, a joke is about to be told, or the “fact” they have just provided you with may or may not be one they made up on the spot. I am incredibly happy to see him. Overjoyed really. I do not tell him this. Instead, I say “I am so fucking angry with you.”
I was a mess, and I knew it. I did not want to add to my nephew’s hurts by dumping my emotions on them. Sharing our grief would have to wait until I had enough time to process my own feelings. I wanted to give them a hand up not pull them down. I spent most of the first day friends know Con had died. Some through back-and-forth emails. Others through Facetime and Zoom. There were tears, snot bubbles, sympathy and even a few laughs over recollections of mutual misadventures. It helped despite the lack of human touch and the aloneness I felt.
I called Liam first thing the next morning. This was not because I was overly concerned about him. Just the opposite. He had a great support system. His wife Hadley was not only a nurse, a hugely compassionate soul but a fierce protector of Liam. She had also been right by his side through Conor’s time at Horizon’s. She had shared his journey, understood his pain, and would do all that she could to help him grieve and heal. Delilah also lived nearby. As despicable as she had been to Con, she worshipped her youngest son. She would provide the succor that only a mother’s hug brings.
I called Liam first because it was easier. Duke would not be. I asked how things had gone since our call yesterday. He had replied “Uncle Danny, I had no idea how much paperwork is involved when somebody dies let alone all the decisions one has to make.”
I replied “Yeah, I know. I should have warned you. I just went through it with Mom. The paperwork for the deceased can kill you.” Liam had the good grace to chuckle at my pathetic joke and I said “Have you decided what you are going to do with him. Is he going to be buried? Are you going to have a service or haven’t you figured that stuff out just yet.”
Liam replied “Yes and no. Dad told me he didn’t want to be buried. He wanted to be cremated and then I should find some nice beach somewhere and spread his ashes there. You know how much he loved the beach. I just have not figured out where or when yet. But Hadley and I talked about it, and we think we are going to wait to do whatever we decide to do until Covid eases up a bit. Then we can do a service where people can attend. There is no rush like there would be with a body.”
“Smart! Where are you thinking.”
“Hadley thinks Kiawah Island. She knows Dad loved it there and her parents have a house there, so it is convenient. But I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“Well, that was a mom and dad place. They used to go there on vacation all the time and I am not sure that is a place that would give Dad any peace considering everything. You know what I mean?”
“Sure. I think you are spot on. So, what are you thinking?”
“Hawaii. He loved it there. In the last few months” Liam said choking up “he would talk about when he got better that is where he wanted to go.”
“Then that is where we should take him. Count me in. Just give me a couple of weeks’ notice and I will be there.” We were quiet for a second and then I asked, “Other than the paperwork how are you really doing?”
“I don’t know. It’s weird. For the last nine months or so my whole life has been about taking care of Dad and suddenly I have nothing to do.”
“I get it. It is like you were leaning up against a wall and suddenly somebody removes it, and you can’t quite keep your balance.”
“Totally.” And then after a pause said, “When did you suddenly get so smart.”
“I didn’t. I have just been through this before. Recently. It’s a feeling you don’t forget. Piece of advice I have trouble keeping myself.”
“Sure.”
“Take the time to practice self-care. You know when you are on an airplane, and they tell you that in case of emergency you should put your oxygen mask on before your child. Same principal. To be present for those around you, you have to take care of yourself. Try therapy, go to the gym, take a pottery class, anything that makes you feel better about yourself that allows you the time to grieve and come to terms with what you have lost. Breathe!”
“Pottery classes?”
Laughing I reply, “You never know.” Then, getting serious I add “How is your brother doing?”
“We talked a couple of times. He seems fine but you know with him sometimes you don’t get the whole story and he is in such an odd place. You know.”
I did know. The odd place that Liam was referring to had less to do with his addiction and brain disease than with his current living situation. When the world shut down in mid-March due to Covid, Duke had abandoned his apartment in Pasadena and moved with his girlfriend to her parent’s massive home overlooking the Pacific in Laguna Nigel. I understood. Spending lockdown in a small one-bedroom apartment with two people and a cat would not have been much fun, especially when you have the option of living in the pool house of a nine thousand square foot mansion overlooking the Pacific. I also saw the dangers. His girlfriend, Morgan, and he had met in a support group for people who suffered from bi-polar disorder and alcoholism. It made for an understanding, mutually supportive relationship. It also gave room for the failure of one to lead to the failure of the other. Misery, loves company.
There was also another problem with this situation. Duke. My nephew was brilliant, kind, and generous but like his father he did not respond well to authority. He walked the trail he wanted to hike, and you could either join him or be damned. Living under someone else’s roof, especially someone who was successful enough to live in a ten-million-dollar home was a challenge for him. It was a time bomb waiting to go off.
“What did he say when you called him?”
“He seemed unphased. Or at least that is how it sounded. He knew it was coming. We had Facetimed him the day before just like we had with you.”
“I hate to ask this question but was he sober? Was he on his meds?”
“He wasn’t slurring his words, or talking nonstop, or had any of other signs he has when things are not going well. He just seemed…I don’t know…sad.”
“Okay. I just wanted to know because I am calling him next, and wanted to know what I was walking into. “
There was another pause in the conversation. We were both still so much in our own heads about Con’s death that the humor and small talk that often powered our conversation was absent. Finally, I say “I love you” and we end our conversation.
I had to summon the courage to call Duke. I was not scared to speak with him but conversations with Duke are challenging. He had a scientific mind. He questioned everything if it was not supported by empirical evidence and even then, he might question how you obtained your data. When Duke picked up my Facetime call, he was sitting outside in the warm California sunshine and smoking a cigarette. I said, “When did you pick up that habit?”
He blew out a plume of smoke and smiled. “I used to smoke when I drank. When I decided to get sober, I kept smoking because it helped me not to drink.”
Duke was nonplussed by the lack of greeting hello. Our conversations often began somewhere in the middle. Like two old friends who had not seen each other in a while, it was our way. I said “How you doing buddy? Seen any green flashes.”
He took a large drag from his cigarette, blew out a large cloud of smoke, flicked his cigarette away and said “No green flashes yet but I keep looking. And I am, surviving, one day at a time. You know what I mean.”
“Yeah, I guess I do. Probably better than most. You want to talk about it?”
“No. Not right now. I am still trying to process it all. Figure it out.”
“Fair enough. But let me be a mother hen for a second. Are you talking to anyone about this? Your therapist? Your girlfriend?”
“I am scheduled to talk to my therapist day after tomorrow and Morgan and I haven’t really talked but she and her parents have been really kind to me.”
“Kind or nice?” I said smiling. He and I had this conversation a lot as he was growing up and he knew that for me the difference was clear. He thought for a second and said “Nice. They have said all the right things and done their best to let me know they know what I am going through.”
“I get it. People don’t know what to say or do when someone they know loses somebody close to them. Most of the time it’s just platitudes and catch phrases they say to acknowledge the fact they know you are going through something. It’s nice. It is what it is, but it really doesn’t mean anything.”
“Yep.”
“Then let me do something a little different.”
“Okay.”
“I think it is human nature to idolize those we love when they die. We miss them so much and our hurt is so deep, it is easy to turn them into caricatures where the good is over emphasized and the faults ignored. I think this is a huge mistake. It disrespects who they were as a person, it diminishes the actual love you felt for them and most importantly it turns your mourning into a miasma of self-pity instead of honoring their life. Do you understand what I am trying to say?
“I am not sure.”
“You idolized your dad. You thought he was the sun, and the moon and rainbows came out of his ass when he farted. And that is how it should be. I felt the same way about my dad. But both of our fathers had flaws. One of my old man’s shortcomings was he had to be forced into talking about his past. What it was like to grow up under Nazi rule, the fear he experienced and the hurt he felt at having so many of his relatives murdered. Until I pushed him on the subject, I could not see what lay beneath and he would have left no testimony to what happened to him, so his children and grandchildren had something to lean into when we said “Never forget.” It left me with questions I never thought to ask and now can’t. “
Duke looks confused so I add “I know. It doesn’t sound like much of a flaw. And he had other faults too that I won’t go into. But this one bothered me. There were questions that I needed to answer. So, I went looking. In fact, since he died, I have spent much of my spare time researching what he did during the war, a question I never thought to ask because he never gave me reason to, and now I am writing a book about what he did.”
“Okay.”
“The point is in mourning for my father I appreciated all of him. Understanding who he was and why he was that way gave me a purpose that allowed me to navigate my grief better. It was his final gift to me and like so many things he gave me I can’t thank him. My point to you nephew is your father had his faults. Embrace them and let them humanize him. There is no question it will help with the pain but maybe you will get lucky, like me, and it will provide you with a bigger purpose.”
The goddess of Haleakala, the ten-thousand-foot dormant volcano that dominates the eastern part of the island of Maui, is Lilinoe. Among her powers is the ability to hold in check volcanic eruptions. She is also the goddess of dead fires, fine mists and has been known, on occasion, to wear a cloak of snow. That is not a typo. Snow on these islands is not an image that readily comes to mind but apparently Lilinoe and her sisters used to have sledding contests with the God Pele on Kilauea just like my brother and our friends used to have down our street when we were kids.
I have gained all this knowledge second hand from my guide, Marisol Kobayashi whom I have hired to take me to the top of Haleakala to watch the sunrise. She has also shared with me that she is descended from the Gannenmono, the first 150 migrant workers from Japan who came to Hawaii 1868 to supplement the native workforce which had been devastated by the diseases brought to the Islands by the Christian missionaries.
She is chatty, which no doubt is an occupational requirement for guides. She has been doing the majority of the talking since we left the Ritz Carlton at 2:30 am. Despite the fact my internal clock is still on east coast time, where it is 8:30 am, getting up that early was a challenge. The multiple rounds of olive therapy the previous evening and the ghost wrestling I had done all day meant that I was asleep before my head hit the pillow. But it was not a peaceful rest nor a long one. The olives may have contributed to my mental health but were contraindicated for good sleep; a tactical error considering I had to get up at the crack of early to drive a couple of hours for the 5:47 am sunrise.
I am Marisol’s only client today. This is by design. When I decided to make my pilgrimage to view the Haleakala sunrise a few weeks ago I paid extra for a solo tour. I have little tolerance for stupid tourist questions. There is always one person who asks two more questions than need to be asked. Who needs that at a time of day when even owls are sleepy? Considering how chatty Marisol is this might have been a miscalculation on my part. Another person might be able to deflect some of her conversation but being alone this morning is paramount. Watching the sun rise over Haleakala is more that watching the the birth of a new day. This morning is a nexus. A place to say goodbye to all the darkness and sadness the last sixteen months have flung at me. I want to embrace a “new day” literally and figuratively.
The inspiration for this Sol searching trip is my nephew, Duke. Three years ago, I was eating a late lunch at my desk when my phone blew up with a series of text messages from him. This was not unusual. Duke was never someone who let a single text do when a dozen or so were possible. I ignored them at first as my hands were lousy with Russian dressing from my sloppy joe. When I finally did look there were image after image of a sunrise. The pictures were other worldly. In the foreground was a barren, lunar type landscape with shimmering clouds in the distance. It was labeled “new day from the perspective of the gods.” Along with the images was an explanation. He was on Maui at a scientific conference where he was presenting a paper he had written as a part of his doctoral defense. His message, written with the passion and urgency of someone with bipolar disorder said, “it was the most beautiful sunrise he had ever seen” and how it “had changed his life.” He said, watching dawn from there had helped him understand god.
A month before my departure for Maui I was organizing my eight bookcases. I had never had the time or the motivation to arrange them properly. Now with Covid and Mom’s departure I had both. All non-fiction books would be arranged by subject then by author. All fiction books are arranged alphabetically by the author. This meant taking all the books off the shelves and arranging them in piles before reshelving. I was deep into this task when I came across a hard cover edition of “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert A. Heinlein. It was not a first edition, just a well-loved copy. But it was special. It was a gift from Duke. When my nephew was about eight or nine years old, he developed a voracious reading habit that rivaled mine. I had introduced him to Heinlein’s juvenile books. He had been my favorite author as a kid, and I thought I would see if he would like his books as well. It turned out he did. It became one of our “things.” He found this copy of the book at the Angel City Bookstore in Santa Monica and sent it to me. His note said, “It is not a first edition, but I “groked” you would like this for your collection.”
Finding the book felt like I was getting a message so instead of continuing with my project I sat down in the well-worn green leather club chair that had been my grandfather’s and began to re-read the book. Hours later I came across this quote “Each sunrise is a precious jewel…for it may not be followed by a sunset.” It gave me pause for all the obvious reason, but it also made me recall Dukes rave about the Haleakala sunrise. I made a reservation for the tour that afternoon.
There is a guard post at the entrance to the Haleakala National Park where we are required to stop. Marisol shows the Ranger our paperwork proving we have a reservation and are one of the fifty cars that are allowed up the mountain to view the dawn. The Park Service limits access to the Summit for the sunrise as they are concerned that an unlimited number of cars entering the park at that hour had the potential if not the likelihood of creating an atmosphere not conducive to a reverential greeting to the first light of day.
It is 4:40 when we reach the parking lot at the summit of the mountain. We are the third car there. Marisol tells me that the first light will be at 5:23 with sunrise following at 5:47. If I like I can stay in the car until then or brave the 43-degree weather outside. I tell her the cold does not bother me. I went to school in upstate New York where temperatures in the forties were shorts and polo shirt weather. Besides, I am well prepared with a fleece sweater. I tell her I am going to go “walk about” and if I get cold, I will come back and sit in the car. She volunteers to escort me, but I politely decline saying I would rather be alone for right now. She does not object.
It is cold outside. The type of cold that wakes you, even after olive therapy, activating all the neurons you have not ruthlessly murdered the night before. I climb the arcing path to the circular Summit center and make my way along a fence that guards its observation deck. There is little to see in the darkness despite a waning “fingernail” moon high in the sky. Just an impression of a barren landscape and Halloween clouds down below.
Nine years ago. I am in my apartment on the upper west side of New York. It is not a large apartment. I do not work on Wall Street. But it is comfortable and large enough to have room for a desk at one end of my living room where I often spend my evenings working or futzing around on social media. I am sitting there when my phone beeps letting me know that I have a text message from Duke. It is a picture of a nude, slumbering, south Asian woman. I am surprised and shocked. Why would my nephew be sending me a picture of a naked woman? We do not have that type of relationship. I do not have that type of relationship with anybody. It was more than inappropriate. It is weird. What possessed him? I do not have to piece this puzzle together by myself as my phone begins to ring almost immediately. It is Duke. He is hammered. Through slurred speech and frequent tangents, he shares with me the woman is a fellow graduate student who works in his lab. They had been working on their master’s thesis when they decided to blow things off. He laughs hysterically when he tells me this, amused by his own joke. He wants to tell me all about his sex life. I have no appetite for this conversation, so I make an excuse to end the call. Oddly, just before we say goodbye, he begs me not to share anything about this call with his parents.
The first thing I do after hanging up with him is call Con. I tell him what prompted my call. There is silence and then he says cryptically, “Let me think about this and get back to you.” Odd had just gotten odder. He called back minutes later. He says he owes me an explanation.
Two years earlier Del and Con had been called by the President of Duke’s fraternity, Zeta Psi. His “brothers” were concerned about him. They loved “Duke” but had been alarmed at some of his behavior recently. Specifically, the night before he had gotten spectacularly drunk and had decided to parade around the party naked proudly sporting an erection. The brothers and his girlfriend tried to get him to put on some clothes but to no avail. When they insisted, he fled the party. An hour later he was picked up by the MIT police running naked on Memorial Drive. Normally, that would have been the end of it, but the police had judged him a danger to himself and placed him on a 48-hour psychiatric hold. Which was the reason for the call. The fraternity wanted them to know their son was confined at McClean Hospital in Belmont, MA and he would not be released until the physicians had consulted with his parents.
Con and Del had flown to Boston that afternoon. After consulting with the doctors who were treating him, all agreed that withdrawing him from school and having Duke undergo a full evaluation was needed. Duke was diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and alcoholism. Six months of intense therapy and treatment ensued, and he had been released with the hope a regimen of medication, talk therapy and AA meetings would allow him to live a healthy, productive life.
The story stunned me. Not because of Duke’s diagnosis. Our body chemistry is not something in which we have a choice. Sadly, he was burdened by his parents’ DNA: three out of four grandparents were alcoholics. What bothered me is this had been going on for years and my best buddy had deliberately kept me in the dark about it. Wasn’t I entitled to know. Not just because I thought of Con as my brother but because I had such a close bond with Duke.
It had been clear since Duke was old enough to ask questions, he had a rare intelligence. His memory was eidetic. If he saw or read something he remembered it. Not just recall, but fully understood it. His questions were incessant to the point of annoyance. Whenever I came for a visit, his parents were more than happy to point him at me and say “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask your Uncle Daniel.” I was happy to answer as many of his questions as I could. As he got older and began to read, I began to share my love of reading with him. He would tell me about a book he was reading such as “A Wrinkle in Time” and because more often than not I had read the book, we would discuss it more like friends than uncle and nephew. As I had no children of my own to share my favorite books, I often gave him reading suggestions including starting him on Robert A. Heinlein’s juvenile books. As he got older, I introduced him to Steinbeck, Hemmingway, and Hunter Thompson along with Heinlein’s adult novels including Stranger in a Strange Land. He told me, years later, that it was reading the books I suggested that created his love of science and his eventual career.
Why did my best friend not share my nephew’s diagnosis and challenges with me? I blew up at him. “For Christ’s sake Conor, why didn’t you let me know? I am his fucking Uncle.”
He hesitated before responding, then said “ It was Duke’s story to tell. If he wanted you to know he would have shared it with you. I wanted to give him the opportunity for privacy.”
It sounded reasonable. Logical. Even kind. But it was a lie. He knew the stigma the word “alcoholic” carries with it. He did not want Duke to be viewed in the same way people always looked at his mother who spent his entire childhood in and out of institutions in futile attempts to achieve sobriety. He also knew how people viewed those with brain diseases such as bi-polar disorder. Most, including me, before I educated myself on the diagnosis, thought of people who suffered from this affliction as “crazy.” Only after doing a deep dive into the disorder could I accept that bi-polar disorder was no different than diabetes. Your body chemistry is altered, and both could be treated by drugs and if you stuck to your regimen of care, you could live a normal life.
What my friend was not telling me, what he was hiding, was his own personal sense of shame and guilt. Clues to his son’s alcoholism had been virtually everywhere. From the stories he would tell of his drinking exploits to unexplained car accidents. He also knew alcoholism was an inherited disease. His mother and father and Del’s Dad had all been alcoholics. He could have done more to educate his sons on the danger drinking posed for them. He also felt he should have noticed the bi-polar sooner. The clues to it had been in plain site as well. From childhood, he had always had an “ants in his pants” quality to him. As if he always had something else to do, something more to say. He was hyper competitive albeit in a friendly way. When he decided to study or figure something out, he went for hours and hours without taking a break. Yet despite all these clues he and Del had never thought to have him evaluated.
Finally, there was the special bond between Con and Duke. The constant refrain between each other was Duke saying to his dad “I have the best dad.” To which Con would reply “No, I did.” Dukes’ dual diagnosis made my friend feel like he let down both his father and his son. He had confessed all this to me at dinner at Arthur J, a steakhouse in Manhattan Beach, shortly after Liam’s wedding. I was in LA on business and had asked him to dinner without Lil. We needed to have an honest conversation about the wedding and Lilith’s presence would have made honesty impossible. After we had been served, I said, “Did you know that Duke is drinking again.”
I hoped that this bombshell would have the same effect as a slap in the face. Your son is in trouble. And you were not there to help him. His response shocked me. He said, “I figured as much.”
Surprised, I responded, “How is that?”
He took a sip of his Martini and said “I know my son. He is a lot like me. Willful. Self-righteous. Flashes of anger. Me.”
“And”
“And, after I got through being pissed off by his text, I realized that the only way he would have sent a text like that was if he was drinking.”
Annoyed I replied, “And you still didn’t come.”
He gave me a look which said be real and said “I couldn’t. When Lil saw that message. All bets were off.”
“You know how I feel about all that. You never should have showed her than message and she should never have put you in that position in the first place. What I want to know is what you are going to do about Duke? He thinks he can handle the occasional drink and that text is proof positive he can’t.”
The waiter came and we ordered a Porterhouse for two along with creamed spinach, and baked potatoes. Alone again, Con said “Have I ever told you about the fight that Del and I had about Duke’s treatment?”
“You know you didn’t tell me shit about anything when this was going down.”
He ignored my comment and said “When Duke got out of McClean’s he came home to Atlanta before heading back to MIT. The idea was to give him a little bit of time to adjust to his new normal before heading back to the stress of school and finishing his degree. He had been home about a month when he fell off the wagon. He began drinking in secret and stopped taking his meds. We woke up one morning and found him passed out on his bathroom floor covered in puke.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah, it was horrific. Del was furious. And adamant. He had to go back to rehab. If he didn’t want to go, then he needed to find someplace else to live. Period end of sentence. Tough love. I told her that she was wrong. We had a huge fight over it.”
I was confused. I knew Con’s history. I knew how many times his family had piled into their Country Squire for a purported family outing only to end up at Fair Oaks sanitarium to drop his mom off. The message “Either you get treatment, or you find a new place to live.” I said, “Why didn’t you want to do that to Duke?”
He replied “Because I know him. He is me. If you gave me an ultimatum of going to rehab or find another place to live, I would find another place to live to spite you. Duke would have done the same and I knew he would drink himself to death. He and I talked about his rehab experience. He had gamed the system while he was there. McClean has one of the best reputations in the country and he had figured out how to get booze and dope there. Rehab, or at least traditional rehab would not have worked for him. We needed to find another way.”
“Did you?”
“Yes. And no. We had a talk. I told him that I loved him. Would never abandon him. But I needed him to do a couple of things for me. First, he needed to take his medication in front of me every morning. Both his Antabuse and his bipolar meds. He also needed to be honest with me. If he fell off the wagon, he needed to tell me. If his bi-polar meds weren’t working for him he needed to tell me. If he did that, we would be cool with each other.”
“Did it work?”
“It did when he was living at home. Probably not so much when he went back to MIT and then CalTech. Some of that was not his fault. The anti-bipolar drugs they had him on originally made him feel, in his words, stupid and less than.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Think of it this way. Remember what a hit of cocaine feels like. Especially that first bump. You feel like you can solve any problem. Conquer any obstacle. That is what Patrick’s brain feels like when he is on a bipolar high. Taking his meds made him feel less smart, less alive and with an addictive personality it is even worse. You are always going for that thing that makes you feel good.”
“Okay. It is hard for me to imagine what it must be like for him. But I get it. What I do not understand…”
Just then the waiter showed up with our order and we paused as he placed the perfectly cooked medium rare Porterhouse Steak and sides on the table and then doled out portions to each of us. It all looked and smelled so good and I was ravenous as it was three hours past my normal dinner time. I tore into my food as if it had been a year since my last meal.
Finally, when I came up for breath I said “I don’t want to shit in your cornflakes, or the creamed spinach as the case may be but I have to say something.”
Con, cutting a piece of the steak, looked up at me and with a bit wariness said with a half full mouth “Go ahead.”
“Who is going to make sure Duke stays on course if not you? You know that Del can’t do it. I have no doubt she loves him, but she doesn’t understand him. Not the way you do. She won’t give him the leash he has to have to find his own path to mental health and sobriety. Liam would walk over red-hot coals for his big brother. He wants to do the right thing by him, but do you think he has the tools to help him? Did you at twenty-three? I sure as shit didn’t. “I moved the steak around my plate for a second and then continued. “You are his best chance to get him and keep him on the right path and like a stupid fuck you just pissed it away. “
Con started to speak but I would not let him “I am not as rude as Duke. I won’t say you through it all away for a little bit of pussy even though he had a point. I will say what I have said before if anyone asks you to give up your family for them, there is something wrong with them for asking. If you want to love someone like that so be it but you need to fix your relationship with Duke. If you aren’t there who knows what will become of him and you will never ever be able to forgive yourself and you know it.”
Con’s face flushed with anger. I interjected. “Don’t you dare get pissed at me. I have earned the right to tell you the truth. It may not be the truth as you see it. And feel free to tell me to fuck off and I don’t know what I am talking about. But remember for forty years I have had your back. Always. Still do. But that makes it my responsibility to do right by you. Not to be nice and tell you what you want to hear but be kind enough to tell you the truth as I see it.”
The anger drained from his face. Then he laughed “You couldn’t wait to tell me this until after dinner?” I smiled and said, “I thought my timing was perfect” and spearing a couple of slices of the filet portion of the steak “More steak for me.” He laughed again and said, “I will take care of it.” He knew that I knew what that meant. Nothing more needed to be said. “You say what you mean and do what you say.”
I flew home to New Jersey the next morning. Three nights later I received a text from Con. It was a selfie of him in Duke together in a dark movie theatre. Both had huge shit eating grins on their faces. They were up to some mischief as I am sure Lilith knew nothing about this meeting. It delighted me. The photo now has a place of prominence on a table I keep for cherished pictures. It touches my heart in a way only loss and sorrow do. A reminder of how you can be right and wrong at the same time.
Eight months later, I was in one of my happy places.
For ten years I had lived the life of a traveling man easily flying over one hundred thousand miles every year. I loved it. I have a serious case of wanderlust and having a company pick up the tab made it that much better. Plus, with frequent travel comes travel perks like nearly always being upgraded to first class, better than booked hotel rooms and finding places in the cities you visited that gave you joy. I had a couple of them in Los Angeles. The Palm in West Hollywood where you could watch celebrities exercise their inner carnivore. Fred Siegel’s the clothing store because they had clothing, I would never buy but find amusing. Perhaps my favorite place in LA was the IN-N-Out Burger that sits directly opposite runway 7R at LAX. If I had the time either at the beginning of my trip or at the end, I would stop there and order a Double Double, animal style, with animal fries and sit in the parking lot and watch planes take off and land
One afternoon in early June I was watching a Quantas 747 land when my phone rang. It was Wen. This was unusual. We had done what we could to prevent inadvertent discovery of our affair. Part of the “protocols” we had put in place was no cell phone calls to each other. Her husband Trey was a principal in a digital technology company, and it would be far too easy for him to gain access to her phone. At that moment I didn’t care about our rules. I was in a happy place, and this added to my contentment.
I answered saying. “Hi. I just landed. I am at the In and Out Burger. You know the one I love right by the airport….”
“Daniel, stop!” And burst into tears.
The comfort and joy of my happy place evaporated in an instant. “Hey. What’s going on? Why are you crying.”
Wen struggled to stop sobbing and replied through tears “Trey knows about us.’
My stomach lurched; the Double I had just eaten had turned to lead. I felt as if I might vomit at any second but managed to blurt out. “How?”
Regaining a little control of her tears she replied. “I forgot to turn off my laptop before I went to sleep, and he figured out a way to find our emails I had deleted. He woke me up in the middle of the night and demanded to know what they were all about.”
“What did you tell him.”
“What could I say? It was obvious what those emails were not between two people who were just friends. I told him the truth without telling him the whole truth. That we were emotionally connected. That we have been having an emotional affair. That we had deep feelings for each other but that is far as it went. We loved each other but had respected the fact that both of us were involved with someone else.”
“And…”
“He was crushed. Angrier than I ever have seen him. He slapped me.”
“That motherfucker. Are you all right?”
“He didn’t mean it. It was involuntary. It was my fault for what he done.”
Angrily I replied “No woman should ever blame herself for a man hitting her. You need to leave.”
“Danny, it was nothing. Honestly, he made a mistake. It won’t happen again.”
“Wen, you sound like battered women who take the responsibility for their husband’s misdeeds. You are the victim here. He is the villain.”
“Danny. Stop! We don’t have time to talk about that now. I only have a few minutes to talk to you. He asked me if I still loved him. I told him I did. That I loved our family and wanted to save it.”
In a second, the life I was living irised down to the size of a pea. I knew in that instant the thing I valued most in the world, my greatest love, my happiness, and the source of much of my joy was about to disappear. I said, “What did he say.?”
“He wants to save the marriage too. He understands that he is partially responsible for me going outside the marriage to find the emotional comfort and understanding I was not getting from him. We agreed to go into counseling.”
Desperate, feeling as if my life was slipping away from me. “Wen, you have other choices. We could be together.”
“Danny, I have two small children.”
“You know I would love them.”
“But they would know that I cheated on their father. They would know that I broke up the marriage. They love their Daddy, and they would not be able to understand the decision I made. I can’t let that happen. You know that. We have talked about that.”
“But won’t they also be happier if you are happier. Isn’t that what all those psychological studies show? Better for a child to grow up with divorced parents than in a toxic household. For Christ sakes Wen. He hit you Do you want to teach your kids that is okay? It is all right to hit your spouse.”
“Danny, I have always told you I love Trey. Just not the way I love you. I have always been honest with you about that. He thinks we can make our marriage work. He wants to go to counseling. All the things he would not do before. I owe it to him and to Margie and Zach to at least try. So, I am going to try.”
Defeated, trying not to sob and feeling as if my head might explode at any second, I whisper “What about us?”
“Trey’s only condition of us staying together is that I never speak or see you again. No contact whatsoever.”
I whispered “No.”
“This is the way it has to be. He wanted me to end with an email. But I convinced him to give me a few minutes on the phone. To explain why I can never see, speak, or contact you in any way.”
“But what if …”
“Danny, Trey is standing right here. I have to say good-bye. Do you understand? I have to go.”
Hurt and confused, I let me my anger get the best of me and said harshly “Then goodbye.”
“Danny don’t be that way. You know what you know. Don’t forget that.”
What could I say so I remained silent.
“Goodbye Danny.” And she was gone.
A year later I was in another one of my happy places, the bar at Gibson’s Steak House in Chicago. To me, it is not only the personification of not only what a Chicago bar should be but what to expect in any imbibery. Everything from its railed, arcing brass and wood bar with leather covered stools and backlit mirrored bottle display to its checkerboard tiled floors and high-top satellite tables nestled against picture window made it that way. There was, if you forgive the pun, almost always a buzz at the bar with people stopping by for a quick drink before they went home to their families or while waiting for a table in the steakhouse. Over time and many trips to the city I had found it a great place to meet customers and when I had a night off a place to have a great meal without feeling alone.
They also made an exceptional vodka martini with blue cheese stuffed olive.
I was in Chicago for an industry conference. Two days of presentations and panels about the various challenges and opportunities digital publishing and advertising were facing. I had a love-hate relationship with these conferences. On the one hand I loved the opportunity to see many of the people with whom I did or wanted to do business with in one place. I love to schmooze, and these events were schmoozapalozas. On the other hand, the presentations and panels were often old news or paid news where sponsors created a panel or presentations that hyped their product or bad news in the sense, they were boring or stupid. They made me twitch and want to do almost anything else. As a bulwark against my ants in my pants I made it a habit to get an aisle seat in one of the last rows of the auditorium. That way, I could beat a hasty retreat unnoticed should the panel turn out to be dud.
I was sitting in my desired location, paying more attention to my cell phone than what was happening on stage when they announced the last panel of the day. It was called a “Conversation on Data Privacy” and were going through the panelists when I hear “From Develin, Coughlin and Bondanza Chief Data Officer Dwynwen Morgan.”
Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fuck.
I had spent the better part of the past year chasing answers to questions that I could not answer. I knew that she loved me. I knew that was real. A flower in a field of weeds. A center of the universe of love from which all other things are created. I thought, I knew, she had felt the same way. But she had walked away If she loved me the way she said she loved me, how could she have done that? How could she walk away and disappear into the good night without a trace, without a word. Was it really better to love and lose than never to love at all?
My world had gone from technicolor to sepia the instant she said goodbye. The soundtrack? Any song from any Adele album.
I was in the darkest of places and had no one to speak about it with. I was someone that I never thought I could be. An adulterer. I couldn’t bear the thought of sharing that with people as I thought it was a shameful thing. How could I explain to anyone the depth of the love I felt for Wen? I was sure no one understood why those feelings compelled me to do something that I did not think I was capable of doing. When I realized my days were just getting darker, and almost too dark to navigate, I sought counseling. Twice a week for months plumbing the depths of how I found myself at the bottom of this deep dark well and what I needed to do to crawl out of it.
The first thing that Dr. Bick said to me after I shared my story with her was to imagine what happened to me as a horrible car wreck. One in which I was severely injured. Recovery would happen but it would take time and I would likely be forever altered. And that was okay. That was life. Life and our decisions alter us. Sometimes gently, sometimes suddenly and violently without warning. The questions we would answer together were why I got into that car and what made me choose to go down that road when I did. If we could answer those questions then maybe, just maybe, it would help justify the pain I was feeling.
I worked hard at counseling. I did everything I could to reach deep and find the understanding I needed. I thought I had reached a place where I was at peace with myself, my actions and could move on. The world once again had a tinge of color to it and Adele was no longer on shuffle. All that inner peace that I thought I had achieved disappeared when I saw Wen take the stage. I did what any rational human would do in a similar situation. I fled to my happy place.
Which is why I was currently staring into the depths of one of Gibson’s exceptional in and out Chopin Martini with three blue cheese stuffed olives. It was my second. The first one I had thrown down within seconds of it being handed to me. I was trying to show a bit more restraint with this one and to help slow me down I was contemplating the right ratio of vodka consumed to olive eaten. I was deep into the calculus of that equation when I felt a tap on my shoulder and hear a very familiar voice say “Watcha doing?”
Without turning around and with a mouthful of olive I mumbled “I call it Olive therapy. I have found under certain circumstances it is a very effective modality in treating psychic shock and or distress. Care to join me? “
“Is it Freudian, Jungian, or Skinnerian based.”
“None of the above. I think this is Chopin based with just a whisper of Noily Pratt. Although the olives may be Freudian. I have to think about that.”
“Well in that case I guess I have to join you.” With that she took a seat on the adjacent bar stool. I turned to her and said, “Hi Wen. How did you find me?”
“I listen. You used to tell me how much you loved this place. I took a chance this is where you would be.”
Seeing her on stage was a shock. But seeing her in person, so close I could smell her perfume, Pure Grace, broke me down. It tore at the fabric of my newly mended psyche and threatened to shred it. At the same time, I wanted to breathe her in and hold my breath until I could bear it no longer. Out of self-preservation I said, “Maybe the better question is why did you find me.” And with a little bitterness added “I thought you were under strict instructions never to see, speak or think of me ever again.”
Wen ignored my barb and replied “Danny, I saw you leave the conference today. You were practically running out the door and even from the stage I could see the look of horror and pain on your face. Like you had seen a ghost. I thought after all this time you would…” She paused and regrouping her thoughts said “I guess I imagined seeing each other again differently. I certainly didn’t think the sight of me would make you run away.”
“What did you imagine?”
“I don’t know. I hoped you would be happy to see me. More Rom-Com than Hitchcock. We would see each other across a crowded room and somehow made our way across the room to each other and greet each other with a warm hug and get caught up. Perhaps with a little melancholy but you know with joy too. Happy to see each other. Joy in stealing one more moment with each other.”
“Yeah. I can see that. But I have spent the better part of the past year giving up hope in ever seeing you again. Thinking there was even a possibility of ever seeing you again…I don’t know…wasn’t healthy. Even if I imagined seeing you again, it meant stopping my life. It would give me a false hope that would leave me down a dead-end road. And missing you more than ever. I spent a lot of time in therapy trying to work through it all.”
“And what did your therapist say?”
Laughing I replied “Not that type of therapist. Dr. Bick led me down a path and let me reach my own conclusions. That being said, she, helped me come up with some “tricks” to cope with the pain.”
When I mentioned pain a look of surprise and pain came across Wen’s face, as if she had been slapped but catching herself said “Like what?”
“You won’t like it.”
“Tell me.”
“Okay. She suggested that I imagine you dead. She helped me understand that whatever we were to each other had died. And, that I had to give myself time and permission to go through all the stages of grief. That I was stuck in denial and needed to find my way to acceptance.”
“And have you?”
Taking a sip of my Martini I say with a touch of irony “Well I think my performance today suggests strongly I have not. But I have made some progress. I am not angry at you anymore. I was for a long time. Breaking things off with me hurt me more than anything I ever experienced. I thought you loved me with everything you had.”
“I did. I do.”
“But you left anyway. And before you say anything, I know why you did it and stupidly it is one of the reasons that I love you. You put your children’s happiness over that of your own. Or at least that is the way I chose to look at it. I can’t tell you how hard it was to reconcile that. I struggled, am struggling, with those emotions. But I had an epiphany.”
“What was that?”
“Ironically, it happened at a funeral. A buddy of mine from college, Thom Walker, died out of the blue from an aneurysm. At the funeral, his family were beyond consolation. They were completely devastated and every time one of them let out a gulping cry of grief it was as if the entire congregation was stabbed in the heart. We all understood. One day he was there and suddenly with no warning or preamble he was gone. That is the sadness of life. It can be over without warning and in a blink. It was terrifying. It was unspeakably sad to the point of being unbearable. Looking around me I saw scores of people who had come from near and far because they wanted to say, “you touched my life.” You meant something to me. My epiphany was that in all this this sadness and grief when people die if they are lucky, they leave behind people who will be devastated by their death. That will be some who will have a hard time accepting that the person they cherish is gone and yet they need to soldier on. I needed to find peace in the thought that with love comes loss. If you love or allow yourself to be loved, there will come a time where you be devastated by the loss of that love. It is the price of admission.”
“Danny, I agree with all of that…
Seeing a look on incredulity on her face I said “But…”
“Your epiphany is good as far as it goes. But when you love someone, their death does not mean they are not a presence in your life. It just means that it is altered. Don’t look at me like that. I am not talking about religion or some sort of material manifestation at a séance or some sort of falderal like that. What I am saying is that people who are no longer with us always leave a bit of themselves with you. Conversations, experiences lessons learned from them or with them. They are still 100% real to you. And it does not take much to conjure them up. A song. Perhaps a fragrance or a scent. A story, a photo. Anything really and they are there.”
“I am not sure I understand.”
“You remember me speaking about my Grandmother Lloyd. My mother’s mom.”
“Sure. The gardener. You talked about her all the time. She was the one who started taking you into her garden as a toddler and taught you how to plant tulips.”
“Yes. She has been gone for a long time now. But, every time, every time, I walk into my garden I think of her. And I have long conversations with her about what I am planting and where. What I think would be nice and how I am thinking about expanding and improving it. Those conversations are real because she gifted them to me long before she left.”
Taking my hand and making sure I was looking for her in the eye she says, “Do you understand.”
I must have had a blank expression on my face because she said. “Have you ever read any books by Isabel Allende?” When I shake my head, she adds “She wrote “Death does not exist, people only die when they are forgotten; if you can remember me, I will always be with you.”
She holds my gaze as if trying to penetrate my soul and says “Do you understand, now? That as long as you remember me, us, we will always be together. I will always be here for you whether I am present or not. I will always love you as long as you remember me.” Squeezing my hands she says “Okay.”
“But…”
“No ifs. No buts. I love you. I may not be able to be with you. But I am with you. I will always have your back. I will always love you.”
I say nothing because what is there left to say, and I know if I say anything my emotions may leak out all over my face. She squeezes my hand one more time and kisses me softly on the cheek, lingering just long enough for me to savor her scent and revel in the softness of her cheek and then, she is gone. Again.
Iz is crooning the “White Sandy Beaches of Hawaii” and my Martini is at a dangerously low level and absent any olives. I signal the bartender for another and raising an eyebrow ask Wen if she would care to join me imbibing. She shakes her head and holding up a single finger let the resident mixologist know that I needed just one Martini.
Wen is one of those of lucky women who manage to become more attractive with age. She was beautiful when we met but now, she has an aura that makes it nearly impossible to look away. I say, “I have two questions for you.”
“Okay…”
“The first is, how is it that the rest of us have become old and ugly and you have managed to get more beautiful.”
Smiling she says “Always the charmer. What’s your second question.”
“Why are you here?”
“I see now. The first question was to butter me up so I would answer the second. Great strategy. Why do you think I am here?”
“Delilah?”
“Go on. “
“Because I am so angry at her that I can barely stand being anywhere near her. I want to let out my inner Karen and just scream obscenities at her.”
“Okay, but why do you want to scream at her.”
“She is so fucking sanctimonious. It is as if she ordered a halo from “Christians R Us.” and uses like it is a medal awarded to her by the almighty for all her saintly behavior over the last few years when it store bought not earned.”
“So?”
“She doesn’t have angel wings. She has horns.”
“And?”
“I want her to know that I know it.”
“Know what?”
My martini arrives and the bartender pours the gleaming liquid into a chilled glass pre-deployed with three olives. I take a sip and say “I want to her know she is largely responsible for much of the sorrow we are here to commemorate.”
“Why is she responsible?”
Sighing I respond “She blames her divorce on Conor’s cheating. That was the destructive force that destroyed their marriage. And everything that happened afterward is on him.
“Did Con cheat on her?”
“I don’t know. I gave him a lot of chances to come clean to me about it and he never did. But knowing him and how he was, I think it is possible if not likely. But that is not the point.”
“What is? “
“If you and I have learned anything together it is that infidelity is by its nature a destructive act. Breaking promises almost always has consequences. But these things do not happen in a vacuum. When we started our affair, we did so for reasons far beyond the fact we felt an overwhelming pull for each other. Catherine was not capable of giving me what I needed emotionally. I wanted to be married and committed and she could do neither, so I went looking for it in other places. You loved Trey but he saw you as a possession. Something he owned and took for granted. You wanted to be cherished. Loved without judgement and condition. I gave that to you. Catherine and Trey may not have been guilty of adultery like we were, but they were accomplices before the fact.”
“Go on.”
“Destruction happens. It is the nature of the universe. But destruction isn’t necessarily bad. Sometimes things need to be destroyed. The question always is what you do with that devastation. You can use it to take stock. Find out why something fell apart. And that use that knowledge to build back better, stronger than it was before. Isn’t that what you and Trey did?”
“This is not about me.”
“Fair enough. What I mean is Delilah could have taken a beat and said we have a problem. We have been married far too long to throw it away. Let’s try to work through this and see if we have the skills to rebuild.”
“But she didn’t, did she. Why do you think that is? “
“Simple answer?”
“Sure.”
“She didn’t want to be married anymore. She had had enough. I don’t blame her. It happens to lots of people. Conor was a handful. And as he got older, he just got to be more so. It is like a car, it may have served you well for years but at some point, the cost of the repairs outweighs your sentiment for it. You trade it for a new model and hope the new owner enjoys it as much as you did.
“Don’t you think that is a little simplistic.”
“I did ask if you if a simple answer was okay.”
“Fair enough but don’t you think there is more to it than that?”
“Of course I do. They both had a wealth of issues that bogged them down. But doesn’t everyone. He could be an asshole and treated her badly at times. He didn’t consult on decisions because he felt as the breadwinner final decisions came down to him and his faith backed him up on that. He drank too much. He was secretive and probably was not faithful. He resented the fact that he married a businesswoman and got a housewife. She never argued with him and instead papered over their problems. There is reason to believe that she stepped out her marriage on more than one occasion as well. She would drink a bottle of wine every night and didn’t think she was a drinker.”
I take a sip from Martin and eat an olive and say “In other words, they earned each other. They should have just shaken hands, said it’s been great but it’s time to move on, vaya con dios, asta lavista and moved on.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Nope. Delilah decided to turn the divorce into a scorched earth, take no prisoner, cage fight of a divorce.”
“Just her?”
“In the beginning, yes. Conor called her right after she served him with divorce papers and said okay, let’s get a divorce. There is no reason to do this acrimoniously. Let’s sit down together, draw up a list of our assets and figure out a way to divvy things up. She rejected that offer and turned everything over to her attorney who filed endless motions, subpoenaed his company and threatened depositions of his bosses. She was out to destroy him.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because at the time I was serving as a mediator between the two. I was trying to convince both of them to step back. Understand that they were not just injuring themselves but all of the folks around them. And she told me outright that her mission was to destroy Con. Which is when I fired myself as mediator.”
“Why do you think she was so angry?”
“I have thought a lot about this.”
“I figured you had.”
“My theory is that she could not blame herself for the divorce. It didn’t go with her “brand” image. She is a god fearing, bible thumping Christian. They are righteous. It couldn’t be me. It had to be him. And I am going to punish him for not being as righteous and Christian as me.”
“But don’t Evangelical Christians have the highest divorce rate among all religious groups? So why would getting a divorce make her so angry?”
I take another sip of my Martini and eat another olive and notice that Iz’s Maui Medley is playing. I reply “That is a great question. I asked Conor about it, and he had a theory. One that I am reluctant even to mention.”
“It’s me.”
“Con confided in me that Del had told him that her father, who was degenerate alcoholic sexually abused all of his daughters. This went on for years with the full knowledge of her mother who did nothing. He thought that she was taking all this repressed anger she held for her father and directed it at him.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think it is true?”
“Who knows. It is a theory that helps explain the facts. Which doesn’t mean it is true. And it really doesn’t matter.”
“How is that.?”
“Because Del did what she did. Explaining gives you a better understanding but doesn’t change the facts and the fact is that her war on Con killed him. just as surely as a bullet to the heart.”
“Why do you say that.”
“The divorce destroyed everything he valued about himself. It got him fired from his job because the company didn’t like the fact that Del’s attorney was subpoenaing them for financial records and confidential communication. It destroyed his relationships with his sons not just from Del putting ideas into their heads about infidelity and such but because she made them choose between him and her. He lost his savings and had no control in his life. I think it wore him down to the point where his body said fuck it and let a cancer grow.”
“Do you really think that.”
“I do. Can’t prove it. But the same thing happened to Con’s dad. He had the company he had run stolen out from underneath him and months later was diagnosed with cancer.”
“You blame her for Con’s death?”
“I do. I think in her way she killed him and didn’t think twice about it. I am not saying she deliberately set out to kill him, but she certainly knew that what she was doing was destroying him and she was very happy about that. And to me it’s the same thing. She is certainly better off with him dead. A million dollars better. People have been murdered for far less than that.”
“You don’t think you are being too harsh with her?”
“Nope. But that is not the heart of my anger.”
“What is that?”
“What happened after.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. She is responsible for that too.”
I pause to take the final sip of my martini and polish off the last of my olives. The bartender comes over and asks “Another?” I shake my head. In the background Iz’s version of “Over the Rainbow” is playing.
Someday I’ll wish upon a star Wake up where the clouds are far behind me Where trouble melts like lemon drops High above the chimney tops that’s where You’ll find me, oh
Wen says, “That is my cue.”
“I figured.”
“One thing before I leave. You have been through a lot, and you still have plenty to figure out, but Danny, I have faith in you. I know you will find a way to put all the pieces together. To find some peace. And I have your back. I will always have your back and you know I am never that far away.”
I grace her with a half-smile and nod my head. I feel her hand touch my cheek and I lean into it as if it is a hug. As I leave the bar, the old woman with cane who was sitting in the table when I entered, grabs my arm. She looks up at me, her deep blues eyes boring into mine and says “’Ke Akua pu a hui hou.”
. Sitting on the bar stool next to me is a woman of about forty-five with a perfect oval face, smooth skin, large expressive dark blue eyes, soft shoulder length brown hair parted on the side that curls in to and frames her face. Her smile is incandescent and comes from inside her. But there is mischief there too. I know the smile. It always leaves me a little breathless and knees of Jello. I am delighted to see her. She knows this. She knows she is the love that eluded me. The love that destroyed me like a wood frame house in the way of Category 5 hurricane. She knows all this, which is why she graced me with a smile and a wave at the airport.
I say, “You remember.”
“Did you think I would forget?”
“No. I was pretty sure you wouldn’t, but it gives me a little joy knowing you do.”
I met Dwynwen Kristin Morgan on a business trip to Boston sixteen years ago. I was on the 6:15 Acela from New York to Boston. I traveled to Boston a lot back then. It was the heart and soul of digital advertising and that meant me traveling there on almost weekly basis. I could have flown, taking one of the “shuttles” from Newark or LaGuardia Airports but I preferred the train. It was a two subway stop trip to catch the train, and there was no security to deal with or dealing with ground delays in the northeast corridor. And when all was said and done the trip took the same amount of time door to door. I preferred the comfort of the train. Nicer seats, space to work if I needed to and best of all I could catch a few cat naps when I wanted.
The morning, I met Wen, I was running late and barely made it to the train before the door slid shut. The train was crowded. Nearly every seat occupied. I spied an open aisle seat about halfway down the car and made my way to it. When I got there, I saw the seat that I thought was empty was actually occupied by one of those ubiquitous black totes that businesswoman used to carry the things that won’t fit into their briefcases. I also knew it was a ploy to occupy seats when the owner of the bag was hoping to sit alone. I understood. I liked having an entire row to myself as well, but I needed a place to sit so I asked, “Is this seat taken?” The woman, deeply engaged with a spreadsheet on her laptop, looked at me with an exasperated expression, as if I had said something mildly offensive, and said “no.” Taking her bag and placing it under the seat in front of her she returned to her work. I thanked her, sat and placing my black Tumi backpack under the seat in front of me promptly fell asleep.
I woke up just as the train was leaving Stanford. My seatmate was still fully engrossed by her spreadsheet. Tying to be the hale and hearty fellow traveler I asked, “I am going up to the club car for a cup of coffee may I bring you back something?” Not even taking the time to look up from her computer screen she replied frostily thank you.” As I made my way through the rocking train to get my coffee, I thought to myself “What a bitch.”
The trip passed without incident or conversation. I was put off by her frigid tone and did not have the energy or desire to pierce the permafrost. Besides I had work of my own to complete… As we exited the train I wished her a good day.
My first meeting was at the offices of Develin, Coughlin and Bondanza in the Prudential Building. They are an advertising agency who had fully embraced the digital revolution and whose clients were among the most prestigious names in Boston marketing including Reebok, LL Bean, and the reason for my visit today, Gillette. The offices were designed in concrete chic with exposed floors, modern furniture with large windows with panoramic views of Boston. The receptionist showed me to a conference room just off the main lobby and told me that Ms. Morgan, was running a few minutes late and to make myself comfortable. I unpacked my bag, hooked up my computer to the projector and put my game face on for the presentation. Fifteen minutes later a woman with shoulder length soft brown hair parted on the side that perfectly framed her face and crystalline blue eyes walks in and puts out her hand and says “Hi, I am Dwynwen. You can call me Wen.”
Stifling a laugh I reply“Wen, I think we have met before.’
She looks at me as if seeing me for the first time and says “Oh my god. You are the man on the train who made me move my bag.”
“That would be me.” And we both laughed.
I don’t recall what we spoke about at that meeting. My memory has failed in that regard. I do remember leaving feeling good about life.
From then on whenever I made one of my frequent trips to Boston, I would reach out to her to see if we could meet. Often, she could not. But when we did get together, whether it was for dinner at Grill 23, or a game at Fenway Park or a few moments stolen in her office when I was at the agency visiting with other people, our friendship gained depth. We learned that we shared the same compassionate world view. We read the same books. I appreciated the music she loved. She laughed at my jokes. We shared our troubles with each other. Whether that be frustration at work or relationship challenges. We exchanged emails that shared the nitty gritty of our lives, philosophical epiphanies, self-deprecating stories of minor failures in our lives and the occasional emotional trauma. It was innocent. Neither one of us was looking to fall in love with each other.
My first realization that things had changed happened shortly before Christmas four years after we met. It was a busy time for both of us and the only time we could meet was for a few minutes in her office. To make it celebratory I brought a box of “Chocolate Orgasm” brownies from Rosie’s Bakery in Cambridge. We drank coffee, munched on the incredible brownies and lapsed into chatting about our holiday plans. She asked what I was going to get Catherine that year. I thought the question odd. Why would she want to know what I was buying my girlfriend? I asked with incredulity “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Okay. Have I ever shared with you my theory of gift giving?”
Laughing she replied, “You have a theory of gift giving?”
“Of course.” I said grinning “Doesn’t everyone.”
“Do tell.”
“First, the underlying principle is good gifts are things that the giftee would love to have but won’t buy for themselves. With holiday presents you need to try to buy gifts that represent the total person. Something that feeds their mind like a book, theatre tickets or a membership to a museum. Perhaps another present for their body like something from the Body Shop or an indulgence that makes them feel pretty. Finally, you need to give them something that is whimsical and fun.”
“For example?”
“Catherine and I have a running joke that the best job in the world would be the executive in charge of naming Opi nail polish. They have the best names like “Taupe-less Beach” or “Aphrodite’s Pink Nightie.”, “Big Apple Red” or “Don’t Bossa Nova Me Around.”
“You seem to know your nail polishes.”
“I just think the names are great, smart ass. In any case my whimsy present this year is going to be a collection of nail polish that have something to do with our life and a couple that just amuse me like “Teal The Cows Come Home.”
“I wish Trey would treat me like that.”
We had been friends long enough for me to know that her relationship with her husband had its ups and downs. In addition to not being liked by many of her friends he could be insensitive and emotionally abusive. It was so bad that many of our mutual friends wondered why she stayed with him at all. Wen told me on more than once the only thing holding them together was the love of their infant son and toddler daughter. I replied with sincerity “You deserved to be treated like a queen if not an empress.”
Smiling, she said. “Yes. The Empress of Belmont.” naming the town in which she lived.
I replied, “Maybe this will help” and reaching into my jacket pocket I pulled out a beige envelope with gold trim and handed it to her. She gave me a curious look and said, “What is this?”
I replied “It is your holiday present. Open it.”
“But I didn’t get you anything.”
“All the better. Open it.”
She did. It was a gift certificate for a day of pampering at the Shangra La Day spa in Cambridge. Before she could say anything, I said “Remember, I told you my theory for gifting is giving someone something they really need but would never do for themselves. You give of yourself constantly. To the job, to your kids, to Trey. You never give yourself anything. You never take time for yourself. I figured you could use a day where the entire focus was only on you.”
“Danny, it is too much.”
“I am pretty sure it is not enough. But it will have to do.”
When I got up to leave Wen, in gratitude for my gift, gave me a hug. When our bodies touched it was as if we had touched an ungrounded wire. A bolt of electricity passed through us that was at once undeniable and embarrassing. This was not something that happened between friends. It was the type of electricity that was immediately followed by clothes being ripped away, followed by love making so intense that your mind would be wiped clean of any guilt or misgiving and would flirt with your consciousness for days if not weeks afterward.
The bolt was a surprise to both of us. Up to that point we had been close friends. Even intimates. We shared confidences and we were open with each other but physical intimacy had not been on the table. She was married, had two adorable children. I was in a long-term relationship with a woman whom I loved. But as we both knew, each of our relationships had deficiencies that left us wanting. For her it was a husband who was emotionally remote, abusive, and treated her as if she were property. Catherine and I loved each other. We treated each other with respect and kindness. But I wanted more. I wanted to be married. To have children. Create a family. She would never say no to those next steps. But when pushed would utter “I am not saying no. I am just saying no for right now.” She knew, and I was beginning to understand, a more straightforward answer would end our relationship.
The holidays came and left. Neither Wen nor I reached out to each other. This was unusual. Normally we would have found a way to touch base. That is what friends do but what happened between left us spooked. It was obvious we were playing with dynamite. One false move would lead to the destruction of our carefully constructed lives. It would provide us with a label, adulterer, that both of us thought tawdry and was inconsistent with who we thought we were. It meant hurting people we loved should they ever find out in way that would leave them forever altered. It was Eve with the apple. Pandora and her box. Neither one of us had the courage to take a bite of that fruit or open that lid.
In early February I went to Boston for the annual “Snow Ball.” It was a black-tie charity event that was practically mandatory for the digital industry. You went to see and be seen. I went knowing that it was likely I would see Wen. But I didn’t reach out to her and let her know I was coming to schedule some private time together. The dynamite had “sweat” on it and I did not want any intemperate move to set it off. The gala was held in the old Ritz Hotel directly opposite the Public Gardens on Arlington Street. The ballroom was decorated in white with dangling snowflakes from the ceiling, ice sculptures depicting various winter sports, and tables resplendent with table settings that reflected the Ritz’s pedigree.
After circulating for a while and finding no group of people worth penetrating I went to see if there was anything worthwhile to bid on in the silent auction. The items up for bid were at the far end of the ballroom, displayed on tableclothed folding tables, each with a clipboard showing the bidding history for each offering. I was contemplating a bid on a weekend for two at the Chatham Bars Inn when I heard a voice from behind me say “You have been avoiding me.”
Without turning around, I said “Does it look like I am hiding?”
I turned around. There was Wen, stunning in every sense of the word. She was wearing a strapless mauve gown that was synched and the waist that accentuated her slim figure and bust and was just short enough to be sexy but not indecent. Her hair was up showing the elegant curve of her neck and while she normally eschewed makeup except for lipstick and eyeliner she was fully made up. She took my breath away. I managed to blurt out “Wow. You clean up nice!”
There was a moment of awkwardness. Normally we would have hugged. But after what had happened the last time both of us were hesitant to initiate one. Eventually, we maneuvered ourselves into a first cousin’s hug wrapping our arms each other’s shoulders but not allowing mid sections to touch. It didn’t help. The spark was undeniable and perhaps even a little more urgent than it had been before. It was difficult to maintain my composure, but Wen seemed completely unruffled. She said “I just came over to say hello. I must get back to my table. But will you walk me to my car when this is over.”
Wen’s car was in the lot below The Boston Common. Despite the late hour and the ice laden paths we decided to cross through the Public Gardens. It is a pretty walk at any time, but it had snowed that day, and the trees were draped in snow, a perfect complement to the charity event we had attended. It was also very cold with an occasional gust of north wind blowing the snow as if we were in a snow globe. We were mostly silent. Each of us caught up in our own mixed emotions. As we crossed the bridge over the Frog Pond Wen tossed me a conversational hand grenade. She asked, “What do you want from our relationship?”
I knew what I wanted to say. It occupied the majority of my thoughts for the past month. I just think I had the courage to say it aloud. Instead, I played dumb so I would not bare my soul too much. I replied“What do you mean.”
She stopped and turned and looked at me and said “Danny, you know exactly what I mean.”
I should have known better than to play dumb with her. She, who always saw through the flack of my personality to what lurked beneath. I took and deep breath and said “Wen, the honest answer is whatever you will give me. I feel more connected to you than anyone I have ever been with. You know me in a way no one else does. And I know you. We complement each other. Fill in each other’s gaps. I want to take you to bed for a week and then for a week more. I want us to fill each other with joy.”
I paused and that went on “But I also know that you have a family. Two children that you live for and a husband, whatever his shortcomings, is someone you love too. I don’t want to destroy that. For that matter I don’t want to hurt Catherine either. She is a good person. I know that our relationship has an expiration date, but she doesn’t deserve to be hurt.”
She just took my hand, and we began to walk,the snow on our path crunching beneath our feet as we made our way. Neither of us spoke. There was nothing that needed to be said. We knew our feelings. We knew the problems that they created. Perhaps we knew the inevitable.
The parking structure was empty. The office workers and tourists had left hours earlier and we could hear our steps echo as we made our way to her car. Finally, stopping in front of a grey Honda Mini Van she said, “This is me.” I leaned down to give her a hug goodbye. She turned her head up and kissed me.
Kaboom.
When, after a lifetime, we had finished kissing Wen looked up at me and said, “You are dangerous.”
Thinking I had done something wrong I said, “I’m sorry.”
She replied “Don’t be. I meant that in the best possible way.” And she kissed me again.
Our affair lasted a little over two years. While, due to our situations, it lived in the shadows and corners of our lives it was the keystone of what brought us joy. Since we could not be together except for the few moments we managed to carve out each month, we wrote to each other every day. These were not perfunctory little notes whispering sweet nothings. They were full blown five hundred to a thousand-word missives on what we were feeling and what was going on in our lives. Troubles with co-workers, emotional challenges such as dealing with aging parents. Both of us would feel anxious if our “conversations” with each other were late and feel as if spring had sprung a thousand flowers blooming when the notes arrived.
Perhaps it is a rationalization because we could not be present in each other’s daily lives, but we felt our notes allowed us an intimacy that most couples never experience. They detailed our days, our work, politics even natural disasters. We made time to share our lives in a meaningful way despite seeing each other infrequently. We were in a long-distance relationship that conveniently forgot that we were committed to others.
We made love as if we were teenagers for whom sex was a new discovery and we were the grateful experimenters. Our chemistry would have won a Nobel Prize. Of course, this was heightened by the fact that we could only see each other once or twice a month and when we did see each other in public we could not show physical affection of any kind. We were both concerned, Wen far more than me, of being discovered. Our relationship provided the oxygen she needed to breathe but her family, her children, were the world and she would protect with the fierceness of a mama bear. It meant our overwhelming physical attraction was bottled up and went we saw each other it was as if you were squeezing a toothpaste tube with its top on. Eventually it would burst but unpredictably. We made love everywhere. In elevators, dressing rooms, restaurant bathrooms, cars, board room tables, beach chairs and in a pinch, hotel rooms.
It was wild, primal, mind blowing, can’t get out of your mind for days, personal highlight reel sex. It was like nothing neither of us had experienced before and while we satisfied each other in every way. It was something we could not get enough of
The first Christmas of our relationship found us in a small suite at the Elliot Hotel, a small, boutique inn on Commonwealth Avenue, just off Mass Ave. This was not one of the hotels I normally stayed at in Boston. I preferred bigger chains where I could collect points and up my prestige levels. But prudence demanded something smaller where there was a less than zero chance someone we knew would see us.
I had been racking my brain for months on what gift to give Wen. I wanted to give her a token of my love she could look at every day but banal enough that it would not raise any red flags at home. After we had opened a bottle of Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label champagne and toasting each other I handed her a small blue box with matching blue ribbon that could only come from one store. She said “Danny, what have you done?”
“Open it.”
She looked at me with mock anger, but Tiffany boxes have an irresistible nature to them. She opened it and pulled out a solid silver “Makers” Compass. Before she should comment I said “I thought about this present for a long time. Perhaps too long. I wanted you to know that you are my true north. I guide my life through you. And, if you ever find yourself lost and not knowing what to do you have a compass that will guide you and hopefully bring you back to me.”
“But…”
Interrupting, I interjected “I know what you are going to say. It is a corporate gift. One of your vendors gave it to you, and others, as a paperweight for your desk. And that is not a lie.”
“I guess I can keep it on my desk at work…”
Smiling I said, “There you go” and then handed her another gift. This one is the size and shape of a shirt box and say, “This is a present of my heart and you should probably burn it the minute you have a chance.” She looks at me quizzically and unwraps the box. In it is an 11” x 6” gray photo album with an image of an Adirondack Chair from I had taken at an industry conference we attended Gurney’s in Montauk. Inside were pictures of places we held special including a photo of the parking place where we had first kissed.
Wen laughed. A bit offended, I had put a lot of effort into the album’s creation, I said “What is so funny?” Reaching into her black bag she pulled out a gift-wrapped box the same size and shape as the one I gave her. She said, “Open this.” I did. She had created an album too. If there had ever been any doubt about how we thought alike it was dispelled in that moment. It left me struggling on what to say. I stuttered a few unintelligible syllables, and she put her fingers to my lips and kissed me.
We made love in front of the fireplace. It was passionate but not hurried. Each of us taking the time to make sure that the other felt all the things we wanted them to feel. Neither one of us was in any hurry to finish something that we did not want to end. When we did finish, we did so together, in a blistering climax that left us without the ability to talk or for that matter think, for many moments.
When we had recovered, and regained speech she said to me “You know how much I love you.”
Kiddingly, I responded “Well if I didn’t know before, I know now.”
Laughing she said “Fair enough but beyond all that. You know right?”
I am a person who believes you should never have to tell someone you love them. Words mean far less than deeds. It is easy to say that you love someone, but it requires effort to show someone they own your heart. She knew that and I wondered in the moment what she was driving at. I said, ‘Why are you asking.”
“Because I love you. And I worry about you.”
“Worry about what.”
“Danny, you are alone. You ended it with Catherine and now all you have is me. And that you only get at best part time. Don’t you need more.”
“A little bit of something is worth a lot more than a truck load of nothing.”
“But if something bad happened. If Trey found out about us for example, you would be left with nothing and you would be all alone.”
“What are you saying.”
“You know what I am saying. We have talked about this. If I made to choose between you and the good of my children, they would win. Not a question.”
“I know. And I agree. You need to protect your babies. Whatever the cost to you. It is one of the things that I love about you. But what choice do I have? I love you. I cannot fathom loving you in the way I do and being with another woman. I don’t have the skillset, bandwidth, or desire to do that. Besides, it would be so unfair to anyone I got involved with. You would always be there.”
“But what if Danny?”
“I don’t know. I have always been the type of person who chooses to face the consequences when they present themselves as opposed to worry too much about what will happen?”
“But surely you have thought about what would happen if…”
“I guess in the darkness of my bedroom, in the middle of night when I am all alone.”
“Then?”
“I find that Ben and Jerry therapy helps make the world right again.”
“Seriously!”
I replied “Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never to have loved at all.”
“Okay Danny. As long as you know. As long as you have thought about it. One more thing.” she said kissing me.
“What’s that.”
“Make love to me again.” So, I did.
What I didn’t know then was that the Tennyson poem I quoted was an elegy.
You cannot be on Maui for very long without being introduced to the goddess of fire and volcanos, Pele.
Born in Tahiti she was sent away because she got into a fight with her sister, Namakaokahai, the goddess of the sea. She made her escape with the help of her brother Kamohoalii (the king of the sharks) who provided her with a canoe in which she her brothers used to sail to the island of Kauai. There, her sister, apparently still peeved over the affair with her husband, attacked her and left for dead. But Pele wasn’t dead. She made her way to Oahu where she dug fire pits. When her sister found her alive, she attacked. Their epic battle, fire versus water, created Diamond Head. Again, Pele fled. First to Molokai, and then to Maui where another battle created Haleakala volcano.
Again, Namakaokahai left her for dead, but Pele survived and made her way to the big island of Hawaii. There, now fully in control of her powers, she dug her fire pit in the Halemaumau Crater at the summit of the Kilauea volcano where many say she now resides.
I love origin stories. When I was a kid, I used to love hearing how my parents met each other on a blind date and how my father “neged” (it wasn’t called that then) her into loving him. (He, an immigrant kid who fought in WW2 and just earned a degree from Syracuse University, teased her about growing up the only child of a Park Avenue physician.) Origin stories help provide an understanding of how cultures view themselves. The muses of Rome chose to have Romulus and Remus suckled by a wolf. It made their people far more fearsome than if they had been suckled by a cow, a goat or sheep.
I am also a romantic. I find it easy to imagine storytellers, before the days of ubiquitous content creation we currently live in, sitting around a campfire or hearth telling legends that were told to them by their ancestors. Each narrator attempts to make the story a little bit more engaging and fantastic. Giving details that made the story more compelling to their audience.
The myth of Pele appeals to me for all those reasons. I love how organic it is. It explains the volcanic nature of the islands and explains it in a way anyone can understand. Two mighty sisters having a quarrel. Quarrelling siblings are universal. Everyone knows a pair of siblings who quarrel and no matter what life brings to them they can’t quite seem to put it behind them. Look at Levi and me. It also suggests that balance was important to their culture. Water balances fire. Our world can only be stable when there is balance. Or said another way, without balance there is chaos.
Or maybe Covid has given me too much time to think about things like this.
I am contemplating all this sitting on a stool at the Alaloa Lounge. It is a small bar in a secluded corner of the Ritz Carlton with a long granite covered bar with teak wood framing and comfortable leather backed bar stools. The lighting is dim and indirect. Playing in the background is the omnipresent Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, Iz, singing “In This Life.” The lounge is empty except for an old woman with a cane nursing a drink in a Poco Grande glass with an umbrella. Me, I am staring into the depths of Pau Vodka Martini with three olives and a twist.
This session of olive therapy has me thinking about the beginning of the sister’s trouble. Pele has an affair with the husband of her sister. This is a huge personal betrayal. I cannot think of anything bigger than that. It caused Pele to be cast out by her father, and massive destruction whenever the two confronted each other. But in the end, like Yin/Yang, the Ouroboros or the Medicine Wheel, they balanced each other. It is the battle for that harmony that created this paradise. There is balance where there was none before. The universe craves equilibrium.
I plop an olive in my mouth. If this is a universal constant, then why can’t Delilah understand that everything that brought us to this point is what it is. There is no need to relitigate past grievances, to tear open wounds that are on their way to healing. Let go of the lies, the righteous and not so righteous indignation and find the gifts this “new” harmony provides you.
Tonight was the first time our merry band of travelers were together as a group. We had agreed to meet for dinner. I had not been looking forward to it. The last time I saw Del was in court during her and Conor’s divorce hearing. Then, she had called me names her pastor would have been shocked by, using fuck as a noun, adjective, verb and adverb. She had her reasons. I shared with the court personal emails that revealed her motives in the dissolution of marriage were more about revenge than an equitable distribution of assets. Since then, I had only received two emails from her. One was shortly before Conor’s death. She wanted to visit him and make peace and asked me to intercede. I had reluctantly brought the subject up with Con who had not just said no he said fuck no. I didn’t agree with his decision, but I understood. She was the cause of all his problems including the cancer that was slowly destroying his brain. I did not have the will to argue with him, especially as I thought he was right. The second was to invite me on this trip which I felt obligated to join. Someone needed to stand up for Conor.
But I had no stomach for eating with her. I knew her well enough to know that she would want to unbury the past, rehash old grievances and find fault with everyone but herself in the divorce. As much anger, hurt and bitterness I held in my heart I wanted to let it go. Wasn’t that the point of this trip? Cast the past to the wind and let it drift away with the breeze. Which is why when Liam had suggested we eat dinner as a group I had said yes in the hopes that I was wrong about Del and we could find our version of harmony. I suggested we eat at Plantation House Restaurant. I had dined there years before with my parents. It overlooked a golf course, the Pacific and Molokai, had superb food and an elegant modern dining room clad in native wood and accordion glass doors that were kept open, allowing the outside in. Those doors and the constant breeze would make us feel more Covid comfortable. Hopefully a beautiful, subdued environment would encourage polite conversation and discourage the rehashing of past grievances.
I told them I would meet them there. I didn’t want our first meeting after so much had transpired to be in a closed vehicle. Putting combustibles in a tight space always heightens the effect of the explosion. Should the ignition come, I would prefer it to be in the open where the blast would cause less damage. As further insurance against unpleasantness I made a point of showing up late for our reservation. An Irish entrance if you will.
Man plans, God laughs.
When the maître de showed me to our table I could see instantly that my plan had gone off the rails. On one side of the table sat Liam and Hadley, on the other side sat Del and her newly minted husband Sam. There was only one chair left at the head of the table with Hadley on one side and Del on the other. Much to my chagrin the restaurant, as a part of Covid protocols had a QR code invoked menu. There was no printed menu in which to hide behind. I was not a coward. Given the right time and place I would not hesitate to butt heads with Del. I wanted to move on, and I knew me: if Del lit the match, it would take very little for my anger to explode.
Honestly, a confrontation was inevitable. Nature craves balance and Del and I were nowhere near that. There was too much hurt and animosity for homeostasis. It was just a matter of time before something leaked out that inevitably led to an explosion. However, I was determined it would not be me who set us on that path. I would not be the breaker of the peace. I give Del credit. She held out until I had been served my first Pau Martini before she said anything. Her opening salvo: “I just want you to know that I forgive you.”
One of Del’s great gifts is she can use terms of forgiveness and blessings as condescension. Where a phrase like “Bless your heart” means “that is the most ignorant stupid thing I have ever heard of” or “You look healthy” means “wow have you put on weight” or the famous “Isn’t that special” means “I am totally judging you and not in a good way.”
Del’s telling me she forgave me was just another way of saying “You were and are an asshole, but I am better than you and as I am a Christian and I bless you with forgiveness.” I guess I could have smiled and let it go. Let it roll over me like water on a duck’s back, but I hated the condescension and more importantly, I had never done anything to her that required forgiveness. Trying to show restraint I replied “Thank you, Del. I appreciate your forgiveness. But I was unaware that I had done anything to be forgiven for.”
Instead of responding to my question, she took a different tack. She said “You know he cheated on me. Not just once. But throughout our marriage.”
Liam, who from his seat adjacent from his mother said sharply “Mom…”
Del shot Liam a withering glance and replied, “Let Danny and I talk.”
I took a beat and said, “Del, what does it matter. He is gone. You are remarried. You are in a better place. Why beat a dead horse? Let the past be the past. Also, what went on in your marriage to Conor is nobody’s business except the two of you and he’s gone…”
“But you always said that you didn’t think he had an affair.”
“No. That is not what I said. What I said is that I didn’t know if he had any affairs. It is not something we talked about. He told me that he didn’t and whether I believed him or not was never relevant. At least not to me. What was important was whether or not you two wanted to stay together. If you did, great you had some work to do. You don’t want to stay married? Also, okay. Figure out a way to move on and get on with it. I told you that from the very beginning.”
“You know I trusted him. Right up until the end. But when he started having all that “work” done, the hair transplant, taking HGH, I got suspicious and started looking through his computer. There were so many inconsistencies. Times where he told me he was going to be at a client meeting and instead he was at a hotel screwing someone.”
Through a clenched jaw I replied. “Del why are we doing this here and now. It is so unimportant all things considered. Let’s just move on. We have been through this. You don’t know, I don’t know, what Conor was doing at that hotel.”
“Why doesn’t it matter?” Del demanded.
I replied with anger born of frustration “It doesn’t matter because he is dead.” I should have stopped there. But my anger removed the chock blocks on my tongue. I continued. “It doesn’t matter because if he was having an affair there was a reason he was having an affair. And perhaps, just perhaps one of the reasons he was doing that was something had gone awry with your relationship. No doubt that he bears a large burden for your relationship going to hell in a handbasket, but he was not in it alone. You have to take some of that responsibility. You can’t put it all on him. I don’t see you owning up to your mistakes. What I see, what I have seen since this cluster fuck of a divorce started is each of you blaming the other for why your marriage fell apart instead of each of you accepting you fucked up. That it was too far gone to fix. And instead of saying we had our time, we have two great boys and some good memories, you both went about trying to destroy each other. A divorce that could have been over in months didn’t end until it killed Conor.”
I could have gone on. I could have said “And it made you a millionaire. The person whom he despised most when he left this earth benefited the most. That is not just unfair, it is revolting. You could have had a civil divorce but instead you both declared war on each other, and we both know the result of that. Your divorce could have been a peace treaty but both of you created mutually assured destruction. But you survived and he didn’t and that will never ever seem fair to me.”
But I didn’t. Part of that was Des’s advice. Always the good angel sitting on my shoulder “Forgive don’t forget.” Part of it was fatigue. Over the past year, alone in my apartment I had waged this conversation so many times that having it again, live and in living color, seemed redundant and pointless. There is no way that Del would ever accept her role in Conor’s death and me bringing it up would only frustrate me and delight her.
“Del, Conor was my best friend. What real friends do is show up. They don’t ask why. They ask where and when. They know that somewhere down the line there will likely be an explanation, but you can be patient and wait for it. I showed up. I was there for him from the beginning until the very bitter end. I did not always agree with him. Sometimes adamantly and with anger. Those conversations were with him and me and they are going to stay that way. What I will tell you is that he was an imperfect as any other man, but I loved him despite his, and sometimes because of, his faults.”
Delilah opens her mouth and is readying a retort when I hold up the index finger on my left hand and say “I am not going to talk about this anymore. I understand and appreciate that you want to, but you will not enjoy where I take this conversation if it continues. I am not threatening. I am just saying. I am begging you in the spirit of what brought us all here, may we please change the subject. “
This quiets Del. But I can tell from her twitching lips and flared nostrils she wants to say more. Before she can, Liam interjects “Mom and Danny, the sun is about to set. Let’s see if we can see the green flash.” We place a pause on our argument and are silent as we watch the sun, now a golden yellow orb with a crown of orange, make its terminal descent into the sea. Experience suggests that there is no chance of us seeing the flash, yet I hope to see it anyway as a sign from beyond the horizon that my message to Delilah is on the side of the angels.
It is a magnificent sunset. with pinks, oranges and mauve but no green flash. Regardless the restaurant still bursts into applause when the last arc of our star dips from view.
Just like that the conversation evolves into our excursion tomorrow. It is as if some internal switch has been shut off within her. I am grateful. She prattles on about all the work she has done to coordinate our efforts. How difficult it was to find a boat, but she persevered and found us the perfect boat for our ceremony. I barely listen. Just nodding and smiling when it seems appropriate, as I am seething inside. My mind is caught up in one of those thought whirlpools that grabs hold of you, will not let you go and threatens to drown you.
Dinner ends. I am sure it was a wonderful meal only because I have eaten here before, and the food has always been good but I cannot remember eating nor much of the conversation. Getting lost in my own drama, being trapped in my head, is a byproduct of Covid. Not the disease but the isolation in which I spent the last year. Spending time alone, when most of your conversations are with yourself and those that you can conjure, gives you full allowance to drift into a different reality and let the world go on without you. We say good night with handshakes and hugs, Del even whispering in my ear “I am glad we talked.” as if our conversation had resolved everything and wiped away the last few years. I am not entirely surprised. Her obliviousness, her inability to read a room, is an integral part of the destruction she has reaped.
Olive therapy was Conor’s dad term. A phrase he would use after coming home from a day on Wall Street as he mixed his favorite cocktail. He would, as he poured a healthy measure of Stolichnaya vodka into a cocktail shaker full of ice, provide us with the perfect recipe for a Martini. “You take three parts vodka and whisper the magic words “Noily Prat” and sim sala bin you have the perfect martini.” He would always garnish his Martini’s with pickled onions which I would learn much later technically made it a Gibson. I never favored the onion. For me the perfect garnish for a Martini is a blue cheese stuffed olive. I have told people for years that it is the perfect accoutrement for Martini Therapy as it provides sustenance along with your therapy. Which is why I am so pleased that the Alaloa Lounge stocks them. I had not eaten much at dinner and could use some nourishment, emotional and otherwise.
As we left the restaurant and approached my car he said “Clare, says I need to tell you something.”
Pushing the “open door” icon on my key fob I responded “Really, what’s that.”
He hesitated, and then met my eyes and said “Danny, I have A.L.S.” and began to cry.
At first, I was too stunned to say anything. Des was crying. Des didn’t cry. I tried comforting him. I said “Des, I have known a few people with MS. They have treatments now that can slow down the progression to the point where it is barely perceptible.”
“Danny, it’s not MS. It’s ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease.” Then I cried too. The type where you try not but can’t, so your breath comes out in gulps the tears come out of your nose. I kept thinking how unfair this was for Des to get this horrendous disease. He was the best amongst us, always looking for the good in others and doing what he could to help them see the best in themselves. His life was that of constant movement. I once called him the most active person in the world. His family did not go on vacations, they went on adventures together. Sailing adventures in Ireland and Greece, kayaking in central America, hiking all over the northeast, rock-climbing, cross-country skiing in the Rockies. Always a little bit danger mixed in with fun.
Des’s tears were not of self-pity. We walked around that parking lot that day because it seemed easier than standing still and talking face to face. He told me he was not worried about himself. He knew that the disease is harder on the caregivers than the one being cared for. He could handle his body shutting down. What he worried about the most was how this would effect his children, his wife, and his friends. What he could not handle is the “pity party” even the well intentioned would foist on him. For that reason, he asked me to keep his disease a secret. Which I did. For years. Because, as it turned out, Des’s journey with ALS lasted far longer than most.
Every few months or so I would visit him. I could claim altruistic reasons for this. I wanted him to know he was not forgotten, I wanted to give him something to look forward to cheering him up. But I would be lying. I went because seeing him made me feel better. He never let the disease get him down. Seeing him made me feel as if he can be this way with ALS hanging over his head, then nothing I faced would that hard, so get over it.
On a visit with him shortly after his arms started not responding to his brain’s commands, he announced we were going on a hike. We drove to a place he loved to walk, the Turkey Mountain Nature Preserve. He told me it was an easy climb, a 2.1-mile jaunt on well-marked trails. I did not think anything of it. I was not in Marathon shape, but I went to the gym five days a week. I was the master of the treadmill and the elliptical. Needless to say, Des was not completely honest about the degree of difficulty on the hike. The trail was often very steep, with large rocks and washed-out trails to navigate. By the time we reached the top of the mountain, with its incredible views of the Hudson Valley, I was out of breath and my quadriceps felt if they had been attacked by a gang of ball peen hammers. He looked like he just walked downhill for an hour. I said “You sonofabitch. You have ALS and you still trounce my ass.”
He broke into big broad smile, eyes twinkling, delighting in his victory said, “It is okay, you did fine for a Ukrainian weightlifter.”
It was inevitable. As time went on Des’s motor skills decreased. But even this did not seem to injure his good spirits. He was not embarrassed or shy asking me to feed him when we went out to lunch at a sushi restaurant. He even made fun of me as I tried to maneuver a piece of spicy salmon roll into his mouth accusing me having the dexterity of you guessed it, a Ukrainian weightlifter. At one point, Des’s ability to talk was impacted by the disease. He had lost partial control his tongue and it garbled his words for which he would apologize by saying “Please excuse my ALS accent.” When I would visit, he would delight in showing off what new bit of technology that he had received to compensate for his diminishing physical ability like a combination toilet, bidet, and blow-dryer that worked on voice commands or the headset and computer that allowed him to navigate the internet and read and write emails. He would brag that he now had better technology than I had when the opposite had always been true. And when I was marooned in Brazil at the outbreak of Covid, he fretted for me, telling me that when I made it home, we would have a celebration.
Two days after I made it home, I received a Goldbelly package with twelve pints of Graeter’s Ice Cream. The card read. “Welcome home. They tell me this is what is on Ukrainian weightlifter’s training tables.”
Despite his disease and the infirmities, he always showed up for his friends. Offering advice, the occasional joke or reminder not to take yourself so seriously. I tried to reciprocate. For a while I sent him handwritten notes. My thought process was that it was easy to send an email but to send a note took time and effort. I wanted to remind him he was worth the effort. He was never far from my thoughts. Of course, he out did me. When Conor died, he sent me a note that was compassionate, heartfelt, funny, and wise. Knowing how difficult it was to write it using a head wand made it that much more poignant. It read:
Danny, I’m so stomach ached by the news of your loss. I know how you valued your friendship with Conor. And I know it was a bond tempered by the celebrations and the sadnesses that each of you have shared since childhood. And I know being far away makes the hollow weirdness worse.
I’ve been blessed with more notice, to prepare for my own mortality than most people get. And so, I’ve worried that some of my loved ones have postponed or passed on experiences that might cause them to be absent when I die. That’s fucked. There’s no unfinished business. I know how they love me. And my friends and family know I love them.
I hate the long tearful goodbye thing. And I hate when people wreck parties by thinking that their goodbyes are important enough to stop the dancing. I perfected my Irish exit departures long before I knew they were a thing.
I’m going into all this because I am confident that you being nearer at the last moments would have been incidental to Con and his loved ones. It’s the decades that matter. The way you valued your friendship with Con has never been a secret.
I’m sorry for your loss Danny.
Love, DFO
Ten days later Des died.
Despite all the protocols they had put in place to keep him isolated from the disease, he contracted Covid. Claire, Des’s wife told me that right up until the end, he had been the man we all loved. The man with the indefatigable joy of life regardless of its challenges. When Covid dimmed that zest, he sensed it was his time to go. So he did, with a perfect Irish goodbye, in the middle of the night, with no one watching.
A celebration of Des’s life was held two weeks after his passing. As the pandemic was still raging and Des’s family was rightly concerned about the health of those who loved their father and husband, it was held virtually, nearly breaking Zoom with over 350 participants. I watched alone from my home office, Fenway, sleeping on my toes in the well of my desk. Not physically being with others was the only way the funeral mass failed. Funerals, at least in my mind, are not just times when we pray for the departed and celebrate their lives but serve each other by giving those who hurt and grieve succor and support. While Zoom could bring a community together it cannot provide the touch, the hug or kiss.
Despite the lack of human touch, it was one of the most meaningful, touching and emotionally unburdening ceremonies funerals I have ever been a part of. Part of that ironically was the thing that bothered me the most about the ceremony: its virtualness. The sight of an empty church except for Des’s family and his casket was a stark reminder not only of the tragedy of the pandemic but of our own individual journey in life. We come into this world alone and we leave it that same way. Also, you could scroll and see the faces of the hundreds of people from around the globe who were touched by our friend in one way or another.
The liturgy of the Catholic Funeral Mass does not interest me. Instead of listening to the priest, I busied myself by scrolling through the little windows that show the faces of those people who have Zoomed in to Des’s service. Seeing those faces, some draped in grief and tears, was a gift. It is not something you are privy to in a normal ceremony and what a lovely reminder of a life well lived. If you are good enough, decent enough and human enough perhaps your life will touch others sufficiently, they will feel the need to show up when you make your exit.
When Clare, Fran’s wife, took the podium to give her eulogy I turned up the volume and listen. She says “Des won! Anyone who knew Des knew that he was a fierce competitor. He won his battle with ALS with not 1 but 2 hands essentially tied behind his back. Physically and spiritually Des’s life experience prepared him for the epic battle he fought over the last 11 years.”
She continued on in her eulogy to say that to Des the fight was not against the disease but to live a good life. It allowed him to approach every challenge the disease threw at him with the resolution he would not let it defeat him. He treated the disease like he treated everything else in life: As a competition. Whatever the disease robbed him of, he was not going to let it rob it of the things he loved. He danced at his children’s wedding. When he could not use his hands any longer and his speech became hard to understand he learned how to use an “eye-gaze” device. For Des the real competition was to see who could live it with the most joy, the most friends, the most love.
Then Clare paused and said “Let’s see how well Des did. I am going to mention some of the things Des did to win in life, and if you did one of those things with him, please start to clap. If you are already clapping, and I mention another way Des touched your life whistle.” She then began to recite the things that were important to Des such as skiing, hiking, swimming, sharing a meal, a tipple, laughing, running, praying, biking, golfing, chess, tennis, pun, working, singing. By the end of it, everyone on Zoom call was clapping. Most were whistling and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind Des had won.
Des and I are sitting on an ornate, black, wrought iron bench with dark wood slating directly adjacent to the driving range. There is a bougainvillea hedge behind us resplendent in crimson flowers and we have an unobstructed view of the Pacific. We have been sitting here silently since he first approached me on the range. I am comfortable with this. This is how most of our conversations began since his funeral. Everything we needed to say to each other we said before he went on the final journey. His presence is what counts. It is comforting. It reminds me that instead of being angry, frustrated, or lonely to seek the best version of myself. Not to judge but to consider what others are enduring. Not to be sad for what I had lost but to be grateful for what I had and have. When confronted with a Delilah or Lilith or I have a difficult decision to make. I try to imagine “What would Des do.”
Des says, “You remember the story of Haitia the Shepherd.”
Confused I cleverly respond “Huh?”
Smiling, he says “The story by Ambrose Bierce. Where the lonely shepherd questions his solitary existence in life and gets lost in his own self-pity. But when he rebels against his own inner darkness, he is rewarded with a visit from an entity that gives him joy. But when he questions that vision in any way it disappears.
“If I remember correctly, the person Haita encounters is a lovely maiden. You hardly qualify as that.”
Des laughs “Nope. I am quite sure I am not a lovely maiden., But I was not referring to that part of the story and you know it. If you ask me a question, I will not leave. That is not how this works. You know that. “
“Okay. Fine. I give up, why are you here? You usually only show up when I am feeling a little blue or sorry for myself. Are you here for the golf?”
Suddenly Des begins to shimmer, the color fades and he becomes translucent. And then, just as quickly as it began, Des looks corporeal again and says, “Just kidding.”
“Funny guy. But why are you here?”
“You know why I am here.”
“For god’s sake is this going to be one of these interventions where I am supposed to examine my soul to discover why my dead friend has suddenly appeared. Then by examining my soul I will unlock some inner truth that has been eluding me for all these months. I am so tired of it. It seems that is all I have done for the last year and half.”
“Is that so bad?”
“No. Just a lot of work. I feel like I have run ten marathons and now all I want to do is catch my breath and rest.”
“I thought you liked marathons?”
“And I thought you didn’t think Ukrainian weightlifters should run marathons. Honestly, I don’t mind the work, but it would just be nice if someone just gave me the answer instead of me having to do all the heavy lifting myself.”
“That is not how adulting works. “
“I know…” I say, wistfully, and for a moment I just look out at the Pacific and try to savor the fact that I am here, now. If nothing else, I know I am fortunate to be here.
Des says “Exactly.”
“What?”
“Exactly what you were thinking. You know how fortunate you are. You are here. You are alive in this corner of paradise. Just like the story. You cannot find happiness unless you throw off the darkness.”
“Easier said than done.”
“No doubt. But in all that time I was sick. When my body was slowly shutting down and my world kept getting progressively smaller and my existence continually harder, did you ever see me feel sorry for myself?”
“No but surely there were times where the unfairness of your disease hit you like a kick in the balls.”
“Of course, I did. I am not a saint.” and then, laughing, added “Yeah, I know you all called me that behind my back. I thought it was funny. That is not the point. When you get knocked down you have two choices. You stay down or get up. Since the day I met you, you have always struck me as a guy who got up.”
“Yeah. But at that time, I had someone to give me a hand-up. If it wasn’t for your back then, I am not sure I would have gotten up off the mat.”
Des looked at me, smiled and then took his index finger and touched it to the tip of his nose.
“Oh. The reason we are having this little visit is to give me a hand up.”
“Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“I didn’t do a thing to help you back then. I gave you a job because I thought you would be good at it. Everything else you did by yourself.”
“You believed in me. That belief reminded me to believe in myself….Oh.”
“Now you have it.”
“Yeah but…”
“Yeah, but what?”
“The last time I was so low I had a lot of hands to help pull me up. I had my parents. I had Conor. I had you. There all gone. I am alone these days. And I feel it.”
“You are not alone. You have Nadine.”
I sigh and looking down at my feet I say “Yes, I do. And we love each other but this pandemic has conspired to keep us apart. Sometimes, she seems no more real than you do.”
“I am offended. I am real.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Listen, you will see Nadine in three days. All the loneliness, all the doubt, will disappear with a single hug. You know that. You may doubt it when you are feeling sorry for yourself, but you know it to be true. Right.”
“I guess. “
“Right?”
“Right.”
“And it is not just her. You have a bunch of people who pull for you every day. “He points to the driving range where Liam has assumed a Tiger Wood like pose having just hit a long drive. “Him. Do you think he could have coped so well with the past months without you in his corner? You know he has your back too. “
Reluctantly, I reply “Okay.”
“He is not the only one. And you know that too. Lotte? The kids and Alistair. You’re not alone. Not at all. You never have been but that doesn’t matter.”
“How is that.”
“Because even if you were marooned on a desert island with no one there to help you, you would never be alone. You would figure out how to create a friendship with a palm tree. For god’s sake look who you are talking to now.”
I laugh and say, “You have a point.”
“One more thing.”
“What is that.”
“You think you are here to say good-bye.”
“Aren’t I.”
“Do you really think you ever say good-bye?’
I say nothing. I do not have to. Des is the manifestation of my stubborn refusal to fully say farewell to the ones I love.
“Danny, it is about forgiveness.”
“What about it.”
“You are here to forgive.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I don’t know Des. Forgiving Del. I am not sure I will be ready for that. She destroyed so much and as far as I can tell completely unrepentant. Come on even St. Des of the Berkshires must see how underserving she is of grace.”
“You really think that she wanted to kill him.”
“You mean them, don’t you? Did she want them to die? I can’t read her mind. What I can say is she knew how to destroy Con. She knew all the things he valued and purposely set out to take each and every one of them away. This divorce could have been settled in hours but that was not good enough for her. She needed to play the victim and get the victory. She won. It destroyed him and he died. No difference than a person accidentally discharging a gun and the bullet fired killing someone. Or a drunk who decides to get behind the wheel and kills someone when they wreck. Their intention was not kill but they killed them none-the-less. Saying I did not mean to does nullify their guilt or grant them immunity for their actions…”
Des said, “What else?”
“You mean other than the bullet that killed Con destroyed more than him and the net result being she had less troubles and a million dollars in the bank?”
“Don’t you think that talking about it will help?”
“Maybe. But I am not ready. She could have saved him. The bullet she fired didn’t have to kill him too. I can’t forgive her not doing more to save him.”
Des looked me in the eye and said, “Just her?”
Angrily I say “Screw you. You know me too well. Of course, not just her. I fucked up too.”
“Danny, you did your best. What happened was not your fault.”
“I keep telling myself that but the way I was brought up was that if you harm another person, the only way you can be forgiven is by asking them for forgiveness.”
“Then ask them.”
I look at my friend and say, “I wish I could.”
He smiles and replies “I have faith in you. You will figure out a way. You are a Ukrainian weightlifter who runs marathons.”
Blame it on Rio 