I See You've Called in Dead

by John Kenney

What would you write if you had to write your obituary? Today, right now. What comes to mind? What memories, days, moments? What people and experiences? I realize, at first glance, that the idea of writing one’s own obituary while still alive may sound morbid. It’s not, though. I promise you. It’s a needed reminder of who you are, of what truly matters. Because it’s your life and there’s still time to write it. Before I have to.

And so the year had started, as years often do, with wide-eyed resolutions, illusions of a new life, as if the turn of a calendar page, the drop of a ball, could somehow jump-start a life in quicksand, change long-ingrained patterns.

How foolish to tell myself a life story about a person in four seconds, based on her hair, how she moved it back from her face, behind her ear, only to have it fall again, the black skirt and black tights and large, darting eyes, lips shining from the rain.

Dating in one’s forties is a radically different experience than dating in the carefree days of one’s twenties. More pain now. More history. More exes and sometimes children. More lonely, more longing, more guarded.

sat by the window, opened a few inches, listening to the rain. And just that clearly, in the muddled, whiskey-soaked place where terrible ideas pose as good ones, I knew what I had to do. It made perfect sense. I would write my obituary. (I should add that it wasn’t entirely out of the blue. On occasion, I write my own obituary. I know what you’re thinking. How is this guy single?)

Your identity is more interesting than your biography. That was another one from one of the self-help books or the podcasts or talks that Tim sent me. Aren’t we all more than our résumé? Aren’t we more than the college we attended and the places we’ve worked?

Yet another mistake (so many, really, though the hearing committee substituted the word felony for mistake) was deciding to upload a photo of myself after college when I briefly sported a mustache, looking much less like, say, a young Tom Selleck and more like Borat.

I spent an unimpressive four years in college, neither lazy nor diligent (potential gravestone epitaph?), wasting weekends, not smart enough yet to understand Hamlet or Prufrock, drinking too much beer, trying in vain to meet women. I possessed the universal college worldview that everyone else had it figured out, felt passionately about their major, and had a keen sense of the kind of life they wanted, and that I, alone, was clueless.

Graduation begat a year of odd jobs: golf caddy, house painting, busboy, landscaping. Some at the same time. Friends were doing internships at law firms, at investment banks. They were applying to graduate schools. The only point on the horizon that seemed appealing to me (besides earning money to begin paying off my student loans) was travel. What happened out there in the world? In Europe? In the Far East? So, after squirreling away a bit of money for almost a year, I packed a bag and left.

Late one summer, as a favor, I filled in for our obit writer while he was on vacation. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. Perhaps that’s the wrong word. It wasn’t enjoyment so much as fascination, as intensity. There was—is—a meaning to the writing of an obituary that transcends the filing of a daily news story. Whole lives. I found it strangely life-affirming, oddly thrilling, this thing where you tried, if only briefly, to capture the essence of someone’s life.

Howard has been my boss for nine years. Here is a not-atypical sentence from Howard regarding my work: “One advantage for the dead is that they never have to read your writing.”

Howard once said that the trick to being a good obituary writer was keeping people alive. The moment they stopped being alive to you, that’s the death of an obituary writer.

The irony is that the art of obituary writing is dying. As newspapers die, with a few exceptions, so do the local obits. Seemingly small lives writ large—the ones that cause you to pause over your morning coffee, stopping midsentence in the kitchen, the smell of toast in the air, a finger wrapped around the handle of the cup, a vague memory, perhaps, of the last time you saw the grocer/dentist/mechanic—that pull you back to yourself, to the fleeting nature of life, to the shiver-inducing fact that that will be you one day, that it can and will all be taken away, that it can and will end.

Tuan is the brother I never wanted.

“I blame you.” “For you not being gay?” “For my life now. For suggesting the blind date. For then causing me to go home, drink too much, write and publish my obituary, and now sit here in this Kafkaesque waking nightmare.” “You’re welcome.” Tuan was enjoying this too much to stop.

Tuan was, I believe, around five years old when his family fled Vietnam, after the fall of Saigon. The family settled in San Diego. His father got a job as a school janitor and worked at a car wash on weekends. Tuan said his father refused to accept the idea that he had a gay son and doted on Tuan’s two younger sisters instead.

I remember Tuan’s first words to me: “The good news is that someone died today.” I also remember I stared, not sure what to say. He shook his head. “You don’t understand yet.”

I happened to be the first person Howard told that his wife had died. This was about five years ago. It was late, the office largely empty. I had been making a point of checking in with him before I left. His wife, Emily—the rock upon which his world rested—had been in and out of the hospital with stomach cancer. Most nights Howard left early and was at the hospital, but he’d had a meeting about a terrorist attack in Kabul. I stopped by his office to find him standing by his desk, coat on, one hand on the phone.

How well do we know a colleague? The ebb and flow of workdays, weeks, years. We might notice a new suit, a haircut, a bit of weight put on. We talk of work, a bit about life, we have drinks at office parties. But something changed in a way I couldn’t quite explain. We had inched closer. How can you not, standing in the doorway of a hospital room as this man I had known for so long—this man I barely knew at all—wailed and sobbed over the body of his dead wife?

Maybe words don’t matter much. Maybe it’s all in the unsaid.

“Fuck you. Stop reminding me that you’re my friend.” He sipped his scotch. “She’s wonderful. Thank you for asking.”

You should have children. Best thing. The only thing. You realize how much better they are than you. That’s the hope you see.”

I don’t think anything matters to you anymore, Bud. And that kind of breaks my heart.”

“There are these nuns,” Howard said. “We ran this story a while back. They practice something called memento mori. Latin for remember that you die. They sit and pray, meditating on this notion, that in every action we should remember, have to remember, that we die. When they were asked if it was depressing, they said no, quite the opposite. They said it makes life so … almost impossibly beautiful.”

“You are an obituary writer who does not understand the first thing about life. Wake up.” And here he surprised me when he leaned in and hugged me, bear-clapped my back, turned quickly, and was gone.

There were more overpriced restaurants, fewer bodegas. On our block, an adorable coffee shop called Fig’s charged $15 for a coffee and a muffin because, a hand-lettered sign said, the coffee was apparently grown by a woman named Ana in Peru as part of a woman’s collective and the muffin was vegan and made with organic lemons, chia seeds, and the tears of angels.

“Howard said I’ve given up on life,” I blurted out, another of those times I didn’t know I was going to speak. “Bit harsh.” “I thought so. Well, not in those words. He said I was an obituary writer who didn’t know how to live.”

You can fall in love with someone from their smile. He drew you in with that smile. Be my friend, it said. Enter my rare and endlessly interesting world.

“Parents alive?” he asked casually. “Ahh, no. Mother died when I was young and my father passed away a few years ago.” Something about the way he asked these intimate questions, the way he waited so calmly, put me at ease. His manner, his voice, resonant and easy to listen to.

“People can die of a broken heart,” he said to the window. “She died six months later, my sister and I at her side. Have you ever sat with someone as they died?”

I’m saying that if you haven’t lived the life you want, if you haven’t loved life, then at the end, I think a deep and very sad regret comes over you. But if you have, if you’ve lived well … friends and family and … if you’ve lived … then just as true is the peace you feel. I’ve seen it. Does this make any sense or do I sound mad?”

I live in a city with art and music and theatre and except for the rare visit to the Frick, I mostly wander the streets for hours at a time on weekends. This is a new thing. Since the divorce, I mean. I’m kind of learning to be alone.”

The story Tim told me was this—after I got to know him, after I got invited down, after we sat, long after the others had gone, by the fire, talking. (And please forgive the broad strokes. I’m trying to paint a portrait of an elusive person, one not easily captured by biographical details, but by sitting with him, listening, sharing his company. But it’s a start.)

One summer evening, a month shy of his thirty-first birthday, on his way from the Upper East Side to a gallery in Chelsea, on an old turquoise Vespa he used to get around the city, a cab that had run a red light hit Tim’s back wheel, sending him and the Vespa into a midair tailspin, leaving Tim in a medically induced coma for five days, due to massive swelling of the brain. When he awoke, his sister and parents were there, by his bedside, waiting, hoping to muster the words and the courage between their heaving sobs to tell their sweet boy the horrible news.

“This is going to be so wonderfully awkward I can hardly wait.”

also felt acutely aware of the rush of time, of my impending fortieth birthday. I felt like something was passing me by. Time, maybe. Opportunity. A life. I felt, like a million people before me, that something new, something better, was possible in New York.

surely as in love as we were. There are 161 songs about New York City, more than any other city in the world. There is a reason for that. Despite the noise and the outrageous cost, the crowds and truly repulsive smells, it is unlike anywhere else.

Are we ever fully honest with someone else? I don’t mean to suggest outright lies, but do we really express those quieter, deeper feelings? Those amorphous, hazy things, core things that even we struggle to admit to ourselves. Do we share everything?

“Bud,” she said. “You’re very nice to come.” Although my sense, from her mildly nauseated expression, was that I was not nice to come. “Hey, Jen. I was sorry to hear about Judy.” What ensued was awkward. What I thought would be a handshake, she thought would be an exceptionally brief and, if possible, contact-free hug. But upon seeing me stretch out my hand, she stopped the hug and extended her hand. Unfortunately, I had changed course and was going in for the hug, creating an image that, from a distance, probably looked like a man hugging a mannequin. Against the mannequin’s will.

“It strikes me that you’re in limbo,” Tim said. “Neither dead nor alive. Much like your writing, come to think of it. Are you familiar with the concept of limbo?” he asked. “In religion, I mean?”

‘We do not know where death awaits us: so let us wait for it everywhere. To practice death is to practice freedom.’”

“Seventy-one years we were married. Seventy-one years. And he was a philandering, moody prick most of it. An absolute prick.” And here, in a gesture of great gusto, she raised the bony middle finger of her right hand and forcefully presented it to the casket. The priest waited, appearing unsure about how to proceed. Finally he nodded slowly and said, “Okay. Well … Amen, I guess.” Clara said, “Do you feel it?” “Feel what?” “You didn’t feel it.” “I’m not sure what you mean. I certainly feel weird being here.” She nodded. “You need to feel it. Trust me. Mr. Kaminski. Brighton Beach.”

“Tuan was telling me about a thing,” I said. “You have yourself stuffed. I’ve seen photos. A man sitting in a chair, holding a can of beer. Stuffed. Dead.” “I like that for you.” “You could put me in the corner of your living room, a kind of novelty party fixture. I’m holding a glass of wine, a frozen laugh on my face, my index finger pointing, as if I just said, ‘Good one!’” “I love it. Or on the stoop, to ward off Amazon package thieves.”

First session, she said to me, ‘Do you want to live?’ Doesn’t say her name. Doesn’t say hello. Just said, in this weirdly calm voice, ‘Do you want to live?’ “And I said, ‘No.’ “She nodded and said, ‘Okay. Then there’s nothing else for us to talk about.’

‘What if I did?’ And she stopped at the door and looked at me. Didn’t say anything for a minute but just looked and then said, ‘Well, that would give us a lot more to talk about, wouldn’t it.’ I don’t know why, but I started laughing. I laughed until I was sobbing.

I wanted to die. I really did. But I also wanted to live, by just the tiniest fraction more. I just didn’t know how. You remind me of that guy. This … person who refuses to step into his life, watching, commenting. Maybe we’re all obituary writers. And our job is to write the best story we can now.”

“Are you dead? My mother said you were dead.” “I was. I’m better now.” “Okay. Well, that’s good. Bye, Bud.”

Howard said that the writing of an obituary is an ancient thing, a campfire thing. The remembering of the dead. Who they were and why they mattered. He shared some advice his father had given him. “You’re not writing the story of their life. You’re writing stories from their life.”

Because to really listen is to feel it, isn’t it? Therapists are taught not to own the pain, not to take on the pain, but instead to simply observe it, at a distance. And you do, for a time. And then you don’t.

their faces a few feet from the face of the dead. What do we do in those brief moments, so close to death that we can reach out and touch it? Maybe we say a little prayer, the rote memory from a thousand church services.