This is Where I Leave You

by Jonathan Tropper

Dad’s dead,” Wendy says offhandedly, like it’s happened before, like it happens every day.

Great first line

Dad didn’t believe in God, but he was a lifelong member of the Church of Shit or Get Off the Can.

You get married to have an ally against your family, and now I’m heading into the trenches alone.

Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right.

At some point you lose sight of your actual parents; you just see a basketful of history and unresolved issues.

Childhood feels so permanent, like it’s the entire world, and then one day it’s over and you’re shoveling wet dirt onto your father’s coffin, stunned at the impermanence of everything.

I may not be old, but I’m too old to have this much nothing.

would be a terrible mistake to go through life thinking that people are the sum total of what you see.”

You never know when it will be the last time you’ll see your father, or kiss your wife, or play with your little brother, but there’s always a last time. If you could remember every last time, you’d never stop grieving.

you would think, in these godless times, that the experience would be empty, but somehow it isn’t. The five of us, huddled together shoulder to shoulder over the bimah, read the words aloud slowly, and the congregation, these old friends and acquaintances and strangers, all respond, and for reasons I can’t begin to articulate, it feels like something is actually happening. It’s got nothing to do with God or souls, just the palpable sense of goodwill and support emanating in waves from the pews around us, and I can’t help but be moved by it. When we reach the end of the page, and the last “amen” has been said, I’m sorry that it’s over. I could stay up here a while longer. And as we step down to make our way back to the pews, a quick survey of the sadness in my family’s wet eyes tells me that I’m not the only one who feels that way. I don’t feel any closer to my father than I did before, but for a moment there I was comforted, and that’s more than I expected. 10:12 a.m.

Even under the best of circumstances, there’s just something so damn tragic about growing up.

“A problem is something to solve,” Phillip says. “If there’s no solution, it’s not a problem, so stop treating it like one.”

Sometimes it’s heartbreaking to see your siblings as the people they’ve become. Maybe that’s why we all stay away from each other as a matter of course.