I See You've Called in Dead

by John Kenney

Alas, no. Freud spoke of ordinary unhappiness as something to hope for. I understand this completely now. An evening under the duvet, with a pint of Häagen-Dazs, watching reruns of Law & Order? I’ll take it.”

“Do you think this is a male problem, Murray?” I asked. “Absolutely. Women are vastly more intelligent emotionally and frankly that’s the only intelligence that matters.

We clicked glasses, two depressed, emotionally unstable men.

New York, to me, is really the epicenter of great cursing.”

“Honoring the Donnellys,” Tim said. “How?” “By remembering. By living.”

The duct tape that had been holding me together of late had

begun to lose its grip. I felt I was watching myself, not really in control of the script.

“What would you want to change if you could?” she asked. “Well, I’d like not to be me.” “Ha-ha,” she said. “No seriously. I can’t stop the record in my head. It’s the same songs, the same voices, the same stories over and over and over.”

“It’s not a story,” I said. “It’s a list.”

She nodded slowly but had a look on her face that seemed to say, This guy may need to come here three times a week.

But we never really learn how to deal with our feelings, unless our parents taught us or

we figured it out. Unfortunately neither has happened with you.

“I worry it makes me sound whiny and pathetic. Which are actually two of my better traits.” “Sa...

And how we want

it to be this constant state of painlessness, of ease and safety.” This last part caused me to look up and stare at her and say, “Yes,” without realizing I was going to say yes. “The problem, of course, is that that state doesn’t exist,” she added. “Have you tried scotch?”

“Is it just me, or do we all have this voice in our head most every moment of every day that is, like, not our friend?”

“It’s just you. But go on.”

“This is where the fear comes from.” “The fear comes from opening my eyes in the morning.” “You turn forty-five next year,” she said. “Yes.” “Okay.” “Okay what?” “I believe your mother was forty-five when she died?” “Yeah. That’s crossed my mind.”

You look for something to hold on to in those empty hours, those lonely hours. Something. Anything. The thoughts random, seemingly running on their own.

And yet here, on these crowded streets, the world came together.

neighborhood, a city, held together by a kind of societal duct tape, a

New York shoulder shrug, a who-am-I-to-judge?

“We look for words at times like this. As if they hold answers. I’m not sure they do.

I’m not afraid,’ she told me at the end. ‘I don’t want to go yet, but I’m not afraid. I wouldn’t change a day of my life. I’d just like more of it.’”

“Do you go to heaven,” he asked, “and see your family, your friends, your old dogs? Is it lights-out, total nothing? Is it another form of energy where we become plants, soil, myna birds? Is it Buddhist reincarnation?”

He added, “We don’t talk about death much, as a society, do we?”

I do a thing when I’m overtired, in a bad mood. I speak without thinking, the words tumbling out too fast. “I’m honestly not sure what the fucking point is.”

“What are you doing?” he asked. “Seriously. Like, with your life. You watch the world go by. This … spectator. Never fully engaged, because why do that? You’re like a critic. You watch. You comment. But you don’t engage. Because to do that takes courage. It takes vulnerability. The chance we might get hurt. But you’ve had enough of that. You’re so afraid.”

But this whole thing … It isn’t about death. It’s about the privilege of being alive. How do you not get that at this point in your life?

like a long time until they lead us out of the room and I am the last one out and as I go I look over my shoulder and still she hasn’t

moved and I wonder why there isn’t a rule that says that you cannot watch your mother die.

How life went on. I didn’t want that. I wanted it to stop, for the world to stop, to recognize this death and this moment. Pay attention to this. They did, briefly. And then they didn’t, slowly filtering out, to their homes and lives.

and wonder who was in there. Because it wasn’t the woman I knew.

She was one of the 164,000 people who die each day in the world, names we would never know.

“I don’t know,” I said, more quietly than I’d expected. “I want to, but … I don’t know.”

“When I read the news, no,” she said. “When I see small children, yes. When I listen to talk radio, no. When I fly on a plane, yes. When I take Amtrak and go through North Philadelphia and see how people have to live, no. When I sit in my kitchen in the winter with coffee and watch the sunrise, yes.

When I volunteered at Memorial Sloan Kettering in the children’s unit, no. When I see the parents who sleep next to their children for weeks

a time in that unit, yes. When I make the horrible mistake of glancing at the New York Post, no. When I see some tough-looking kid on the subway who I’ve mentally judged based on how he...

So I was away for work. And he went into the hospital. It all happened fast. Except I waited to go back because I had this … big meeting. I waited two days because I thought … you know. Anyway. He died while I was in the air, flying back. All because of a meeting. With a bank. About some fucking deal.”

the heat of the day gone and if you sit and listen to the crickets and swig a cold Miller, well, what else is there? I’d bet that’s what he was thinking. No pain now, for my little brother.

I was in a superb place in my life. I was like Tony Robbins, only with stains on my clothes and the look of someone experiencing electroshock therapy.

“It’s just … looking back … that wasn’t me. It wasn’t the person my father had raised. So, I just threw myself into work. Work, running, repeat.”

couldn’t get the noise out of my head. It just kept beating the crap out of me, telling me how horrible I was. I’d had something similar happen halfway through my first year in college. This was worse, though.”

We lay in a fetal position on a couch in a common room staring at Wheel of Fortune. Crippling anxiety. The inability to get out of bed. To change your clothes. The heaviness of your arms. The heaviness of blinking. This … absence of any hope. I’m fun. Aren’t I fun?”

‘There are three secrets to a happy life. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.’

The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.” “Who said that?” I asked. “The Spice Girls.” She grinned. “Virginia Woolf. We can change. Now maybe it’s just a bit. But that little bit is … everything.”

“Okay, my turn. How much do you know about mayflies?” I asked, a little gift from my buddy. “What?” “Mayflies,” I said. “A friend of mine told me a mayfly’s entire lifespan is just twenty-four hours. That gives us, like, five lifetimes.”

I defy you to not feel a thrill on this island, on the Upper East Side, walking past the door-manned buildings, the high-end boutiques, the small shops that have been here a hundred years; stationery stores and cobblers, florists and dry cleaners.

About three hundred thirty billion cells are replaced every day. You’re different today than you were yesterday.” “I like

that idea. But I feel the same.”