Against Small Talk

Muting the NBA playoffs, turning inland, and the art of the obit

Everyone slept downstairs except me. I couldn’t handle the sound of labored breathing. A stranger might have mistaken it for a snore, but I knew it for what it was. I’d heard it before — the desperate hoovering and those long, terrible, unpredictable pauses — and seen how dry a mouth loosened from its motor can get. I endured those sounds all through the night beside my father at his death bed until there was a silence and stillness that brought my own convulsions, my own irregular breathing, my own desperate scraping as I tried to understand something I’ve never felt.

I knew I would get no sleep listening to that death rattle, so I fled upstairs while her loved ones curled around her like cubs in a den. I fled fearing my mind would retreat inland, returning to Nebraska where my family lives and where I haven’t been in more than a year, not since I felt my Dad’s hand grow cold.

I needed the sleep too, having managed no more than five hours a night the last two nights and even less the night prior. We were facing a macabre FOMO. Everything that kept us away from D, physically and mentally, was the enemy — work, sleep, fatigue, and other obligations of the so-called living.

What’s beautiful is that D never spent one night alone. Even during her week-long stays in the hospital, someone always volunteered for the graveyard shift. I never slept over with my Dad, not even at his home.

I have vowed to be present this time but I have faltered in recent days. I am tired and my head aches for reasons unknown. Too much caffeine, too much to compute. I have allowed the machinery of living to overpower the debts of dying. I am depleted and don’t know what will replenish me besides a thousand-hour sleep but waking up is waking up.

My world has shrunk to a three-story condo with a pullout couch, one pair of jeans, and a deck I escape to when I choose sunrise over sleep, beer over seltzer, and cigarettes over control. In two weeks time, I’ve walked and jogged every stretch of this Jersey compound and no longer find it strange to see deer so comfortable in the most densely populated state in America.

After my Dad died, I couldn’t bring myself to watch the NBA playoffs, but that’s the only thing that will hold my attention lately. That, and Hyperion, which I’ve only just begun.

My Dad was the biggest, most knowledgeable sports fan I know. I learned at his funeral that the pin code everyone in my family uses was the score to a legendary Huskers football game. We used to watch a show together called Stump the Schwab. The Schwab was an oily stats man with insane recall -- any stat line, any game, and any player could be summoned from any sport and any time period with stunning precision. He was a mustachioed Google and ESPN built a trivia game show around his superfan knowledge. The Schwab won 80% of the time during its two season run and I think my Dad would have been in the 20%.

In the aftermath of my Dad’s death, I considered doing some kind of studied literary survey about obits. It is an under-appreciated art form. How do you sum up a person’s life? How many words does one deserve? I started bookmarking notable sport deaths at the time and they came in droves: Bill Walton, OJ, Jerry West, Willie Mays. Did people always die this often, and was I only just now paying attention? Bill Walton, it turns out, loved biking as much as me.

I didn’t notice it at the time, but the Schwab died of a heart attack 19 days after my Dad died of a stroke.

My Dad was a fan of the form and often posted obits to Facebook. He would’ve cried at the news of each and every one of their deaths. My Dad deserves an entire book, and so does D.

If I’m being generous, and I’m in the mood to be, I’d say everyone deserves a book. John McPhee is one of my favorite writers because he can make everything interesting. He wrote an entire book about oranges that I finished in two sittings, and he won a Pulitzer for a mammoth work on geology, bringing high drama to deep time. What makes his writing so lovely is simply his curiosity, his observational prowess, and his uncanny ability to coax poetry from specificity. Take naming for instance. In a long essay I’ve twice read aloud to C about his favorite restaurant, McPhee devotes whole paragraphs to naming ingredients, creating a sonic effect as soothing and appealing as the aroma of chicken soup simmering on the stove.

If you’re curious enough, I think you’ll find everyone has a story. And if you listen closely enough, I think you’ll find everyone is worthy of a book.

I’ve been disappointed in myself for not being able to match the level of care C has shown her mother for the past year, but I think my Dad would be more envious that the NBA Playoffs have been playing on mute in the background. These games have enraptured Irish family visiting from afar and roused devout and dormant Knicks fans raised in the Bronx and transplanted into Brooklyn. The playoffs have given us lads conversation fodder for when the well runs dry.

I’ve had no appetite for small talk lately, in part because it feels impossible to answer “How’s it going?” simply or truthfully. Life has felt too big for such talk. Tectonic plates are shifting underfoot, terraforming new ranges and deeper basins, and a seismic rupture occurred early this morning. Lightning flashed from phones. Birdsong streamed through at 4am. From my perch in the attic, a white heron streaked into view before landing in a creek full of three days rain. In the days to come, the creek will only get fuller and the song louder. May the heron return as lightning and grace our wet eyes.