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It's Time To Talk About Talking To The People Who Aren't Talking [1]

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Date: 2023-10-01  

About a minute into the tape of my father’s funeral there’s the sound of a door slamming followed by a sort of voiceless commotion. Faintly, if you’re listening for it, you can hear someone gasping for breath. That’s Dad’s eldest son John just getting in from the very peak of combined grief and stress in his life.

Coincidentally you can also hear the peak of mine drawing to a close. The timing is uncanny — almost a photo-finish — but his entry into the Grief/Stress biathalon is going to make mine look like coping with ants at a picnic.

By now you can probably tell this isn’t going to be exactly upbeat material, so I’m going to give you the point of the story up front: Thanks to the efforts of a party in its death throes and an industry based on making us hate one another, the number of American friends, family members and/or loved ones not speaking to

each other is at or near historic levels. So if you know people who aren’t talking and probably should be, maybe you should go talk to them. (Separately would probably be best...) See what the deal is. Statistically speaking, it’s probably a misunderstanding. And if you’re not talking to someone, I’m sure you have your reasons, so go talk about it with someone else. Think of it as a patriotic act — like a Victory Garden for interpersonal relationships.

Also, consider the adagio (2nd movement) from Mozart’s 23rd piano concerto as a quieter, more humble alternative to the Requiem: when you’re saying goodbye to a friend as opposed to mourning a world leader or trying to pick a fight with God. On the tape of my father’s funeral the introduction sounds a bit stiff and unemotional, ironically because I’m the one playing it and despite being half mad with grief I’m determined not to hit a single wrong note. That, and being barely able to see the keyboard, turned the easiest thing Mozart ever wrote into a minefield and constituted the stress component of my entry in the biathalon.

Brother John had been two blocks away, sitting in a rented car and trying to think of what he’d say at the funeral of a man he’d loved but hadn’t been speaking to for most of the last twelve years. That’s the kind of dedication and long-term training I was up against: the endurance required for the estrangement is what made him a grief athlete, but then burying the hatchet and making amends and becoming, as those newly reunited so often do, the very best of friends mere weeks before Dad unexpectedly dies… that’s the work of a grief artist.

As for stress, just the enhanced pressure on his eulogy would’ve sufficed, but here’s where artistry becomes sheer genius. By parking on a boulevard (speed limit 45 mph) just after it takes a slight curve so what you see in the drivers’ side mirror isn’t the lane next to you but the lane next to it. So just when the funeral’s about to begin Brother John pulls out and WHAM! gets sideswiped by a car moving somewhere between forty and fifty. It’s more than just a glancing blow but there’s no chain reaction and nobody’s hurt. Brother John tells the other driver his situation, writes down the address of where he’ll be and hands it to him, along with his wallet and briefcase and despite best intentions and legal obligations he says “Here, this is everything I have… I’m sorry I just — I just can’t stay here right now!” and literally runs away.

Then he runs the two blocks and makes it inside, catches his breath and takes a seat just as the piano solo ends and the first wave of orchestral anguish swoops down from the heavens. Stunning. It’s hard to imagine a more fraught combination of grief and stress that didn’t include acts of war, terrorism or the naturally catastrophic.

None of this is mentioned in the chronology of my father’s life which was compiled and sent to me by his biographer and one of the very few shortcomings of an otherwise amazing document. It’s a 250+ page printout of a spread sheet with close to 1500 meticulously researched and sourced entries cataloguing the events of dad’s life. It reminds me of a Tibetan Buddhist sand mandala or the Taj Majal, where the subject becomes eclipsed by the sheer amount of work that went into covering it.

Also missing though is any mention of the twelve year estrangement with his eldest son, or its cause. But it’s a damn long time for a father and son to go without fixing a problem. There were a lot of other adults in the room, all of whom seemed to share a tacit understanding that we shouldn’t interfere. We were all good people but I’m wondering if we were also all wrong. The ones who start a feud aren’t necessarily the best at knowing when to end it. And the ones that do always seem to agree that it went on far too long.

“I might have made a tactical error not going to a physician for twenty years. It was one of those phobias that didn't pay off.” - Warren Zevon

This would be one of a very few things my father had in common with the guy who wrote a lot more than Werewolves of London and I feel like it’s primarily a guy thing. It’s obviously one for the privileged. I just have a hard time imagining women maintain that they don’t need routine check-ups or any of that “never been sick a day in my life!” stuff. Or pretend there’s any other dynamic at work besides fear of diagnosis. While avoiding doctors is the best way to avoid being diagnosed, you’ve gotta stick with it!

For Example:

After years and years of avoiding them Dad finally goes to see a doctor. When he walks in he only has constipation, but when he walks out he’s got Cancer-Of-Everything.

Turns out the guy who didn’t like regular check-ups didn’t take too well to radical invasive surgeries either. He has six children from two marriages and we’ve flown in and are camped in a waiting area. It was a long time before we could see him, and the moment I did, I wished I hadn’t. Because I knew I wasn’t going to unsee him like that and that was thirty-two years ago.

A bit of advice: if you’re about to see a loved one who’s just had major surgery and you don’t know what that looks like, ask if you can see someone else in the same condition first. You don’t want your initial exposure to be someone you love.

Also, if there’s any other way, don’t let that image be the messenger of what’s to come. It’s hard to tell from what the doctors say because they’re not able to discount any possibility. I’d been told that the surgery was no big deal and I’d just be there for moral support and to help with his recovery, which I believed 100% because of course I did. I hadn’t thought about my father dying since I was six and needed to cry. Because it seemed to be general knowledge back then that if you needed to cry you thought about your Dad dying because that’s the saddest thing there was. You didn’t think about your mom dying because 1) it was unthinkable, and 2) if it hadn’t been it wouldn’t have been sad so much as insane. Thinking of your mom dying would be what you’d do if instead of crying for some reason you needed to go catatonic.

Brother John was going by what the doctors were saying through the filter of what he wanted to hear, and that was that Dad would be coming back. They’d removed his colon, some length of intestines, part of his stomach and I forget what else but there was more. Enough for the rest of us to know that the last thing the man we knew would want would be to regain consciousness, but John and the doctors are talking like generals in a war. John tries to convince us it’s the right thing to do, “at least so he could make some phone calls…”



Phone calls. Jesus... It was heartbreaking, And madness. We all understood it, but knew it was madness nonetheless. And that Brother John had a long and painful journey ahead.

Besides my father post-op, the other indelible mental snapshot I have from the time is my little brother standing in front of a parking lot when he met me at the airport. He’s still at least 25 feet away and has a tired, joyless expression like he’s in the middle of something that’s taking way too long. Everything looks more or less normal except that when our eyes meet his expression doesn’t change and his eyes don’t break contact, they just keep staring directly into mine in a way that people never do unless they absolutely have to. When we either can’t find the words or just can’t bear to say them, that’s what we do. And that’s how I knew our father was going to die.

Like the other image, the medical miracle of tubes and wires, this was miraculous in its own way: that in less than a second from twenty-five feet away enough information was transferred just from someone’s eyes to change everything, and the way I’d felt three seconds before I wouldn’t feel again for at least the next two years. This was my introduction to Grief. And at first it was a lot more exciting than I’d thought. In time it would just be relentless depression and gloom, but initially I was just a guy who had a real big problem to solve, and all kinds of energy to solve it. I’d try all kinds of approaches, so that pretty soon my mind became like a monkey in a cage: never slowing down, trying all the bars over and over, always looking this way and that... trying to find some new angle… some way to look at things that wasn’t just crushingly sad.

I started learning the opening to the Adagio when I was twelve or thirteen because it was so beautiful and sad, and slow enough for me to play. When it was recognizable Dad said it was what he wanted to have played at his funeral. I said ok, and promised to remember it. And I did. That was the last he ever mentioned it, or having a funeral. Or, for that matter, anything having to do with his own mortality. He wasn’t religious in the strict sense, but a High Priest of the oldest and most popular religion of all-time: “The Sacred Order of Somehow I’m Gonna Be The Exception.”

That was in 1973.

I was going to see him the next day and make that my last. There were no hopeful outcomes that didn’t include consciousness, and that would be the very worst thing that could happen. I’d thought about bringing a tape of the adagio so he’d know I’d remembered, and that what was happening would be over with soon. Classical music was his means of transcendence and what he’d chosen for his funeral would also be the last piece he’d want to hear. Things like that — the order of things, finishing touches and the like — were important to him, or at least they had been.

It had seemed like the right thing to do until it didn’t, when the thought of what I might think constituted “important” made it seem utterly insane. “Well son, just now my hierarchy of priorities is being dominated by the removal of my digestive tract but let me check... ah yes, here we are! Right between blood pressure and physical helplessness: ‘Personal Requests Outstanding from 1973.’ Looks like I can close the whole file now, thanks a lot son!”

If there was one thing he knew how to do though it was live inside his mind - he’d been doing it since he was three. I couldn’t help wondering if he’d been here and conscious the entire time… just playing possum to avoid the embarrassment of helplessness. The doctors say it wasn’t possible but when I ask them where he is, they don’t know. I think of him as a little kid and his body’s one of those rooming houses he was stuck in growing up. But mostly I try to think he’s in outer space. It’s my third visit and what was horrifying is becoming normal and I don’t want that. It’s time to say goodbye. But first, just to make sure he’s really not here I lean close and make an offer… Cigarette?



Nope. Not even a twitch. That was it though, wasn’t it? That’s what the whole doctor boycott was about. The doctors would lecture you. And they would be right. And you would be wrong. And you’re too smart to pretend it wasn’t true or that you had any excuses. So you, one of the smartest people I’ll ever know, forfeited practically all the advantages of modern medicine instead...

That’s okay Dad — If anyone understands that, it’s me.

Just so you know, I remembered.



I pressed play and took my seat in-between Mozart on the tape machine and my father on all the others and just sat there letting nothing but beauty and sadness wash over me. And ever since then I’ve never had a problem determining which were the saddest seven and a half minutes of my life.

Palliative care couldn’t begin so long as there was a single holdout, which of course was Brother John, but he knew it was beyond hope and relented before the futile became monstrous. Which was good timing because soon afterwards Dad’s blood became infected with sepsis from all the cutting and he died, thankfully, before ever regaining consciousness.

Death at sixty-five in the late 20th century is bad timing for being a life cut short but good timing if you’d fulfilled your life’s ambition at the age of sixty-four and a half. But also bad timing if you didn’t receive notice of official recognition from the Guinness Book of World Records until nine days after your death. It was an impressive achievement, a tribute to what he loved and he was the very first. Someday I hope I can tell you about it

The memorial service for family and close friends went well, except for the car crash of course but the police were kept at bay until after Brother John had a chance to speak, which he did poignantly — the epitome of grace under pressure. He didn’t have to win any of us over because we’d been in our way complicit by our silence. We all felt sure that dad had forgiven him so the only person Brother John really had to make peace with was the one he saw in the mirror.

As foretold Brother John had a long journey ahead: longer than I’d have guessed, but also less painful for being on a mission and in knowing he was doing right by his dad. I imagine it was also one of those journeys of self-discovery by proxy you usually hear about from worshipers and the faithful. But after eight or nine years and a few trips to Seattle, Spokane and Southern California. Also Germany, Haiti, Denver and God-knows-where-else. After a few hundred, or perhaps thousand hours of research in libraries, and going through various school, foreign service and military records, plus interviews with friends, associates and family, Brother John had compiled a chronological spreadsheet of every verifiable event that took place in our father’s life. It’s really a hell of a document — the sine qua non of personal tributes — and just calling it a chronology is like calling the Taj Mahal “a tomb.” He sent copies to all of Dad’s children and grandchildren and by God when he was done he was done. He took his wife to Paris and they went to cooking school for a year.

So if you know someone estranged from a loved one, or if you’re one of those people yourself, consider this a cautionary tale about things going on for too long when you don’t really mean for them to. Also consider things like age and health and how interesting their lives have been, because a new standard ‘s been set for making amends.

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