With you/Without you

My Grandpa Jim had a talking car.

You could ask it any yes or no question, and it would respond: one beep meant yes, two beeps meant no.

Every time he came over, I’d ask the car countless goofy questions and receive answers to all of them. My grandpa, hiding his key fob in his pocket, watched with delight.

He was a Vietnam veteran with a Purple Heart, but he didn’t act like a hardened soldier — at least, not with his grandkids. When he babysat me every Thursday, we’d spend hours scribbling in coloring books. He marveled at how good I was at staying inside the lines.

One November morning, my dad, the oldest of Grandpa Jim’s six kids, got a call from my grandma.

He was dead. 

We think it was a heart attack, but they never did an autopsy, so we don’t know for sure. Given that he was just 61 and had no known health issues, it remains a mystery. When he got the news, though, the cause of death was the last thing on my dad’s mind. He sat down and buried his face in his hands.

“How am I gonna tell Madeline?” he croaked to my mom.

***

I was five years old when my Grandpa Jim died. It was both my first experience with death and one of my first memories — my mom telling me at the dinner table, sitting quietly in the funeral home with my cousins, not quite knowing what to make of the situation.

Death is difficult to process when it’s your first time losing someone, especially when you’re five. But, as I would soon find out, it never really gets any easier, even when it becomes a constant fixture in your life.

In the decade or so following my Grandpa Jim’s death, I attended several wakes and funerals, but most were for older relatives whose deaths were not particularly shocking. 

But during a three-year stretch when I was in high school, my entire perception of the world gradually fell apart.

When I was 16, my dad’s best friend Chris, affectionately known as “Uncle Tanky” to my brother and me, died.

This loss was tangibly different than the previous ones.

Uncle Tanky was just 48 — my dad’s best friend for more than 40 years. He was a constant presence in my life, and I saw him twice as often as many of my family members. The only reason I even knew Miami University existed was because his son went here — and he predicted I’d end up here, too.

He was the fourth close friend my dad had lost in a period of five years.

I’ve been a huge baseball fan since I was about 8 years old, and though that can mostly be attributed to my dad, my Uncle Tanky also played a major role in my fandom because of the massive number of games I watched at his house.

My family went to dozens of parties at my Uncle Tanky’s house over the years, and while my brother played with the other kids, I preferred to hang out with the foul-mouthed, beer-drinking men. 

At first, I didn’t care much about the games we watched and just wanted to feel cool hanging out with the adults. After a few years and a lot of instruction from my dad and uncle, though, I could talk baseball with the best of them — I still can.

I still remember the way I felt when I saw my uncle, the life of every party, who never missed an opportunity to bust my chops, in a casket. All the air exited my lungs, and it seemed as though the walls were closing in on me.

It didn’t feel real. Five years later, it still doesn’t.

I was spared from death for 16 months, but when I was 17, my other grandpa — Papa — died.

My mom, knowing she’d be too emotional to write her own father’s eulogy, asked me to do it. I agreed, but it was an unbelievably daunting task.

How do you capture 75 years of life in a brief speech? It’s extremely difficult — especially knowing the dozens of people sitting before you will be hanging on every word you say. They hope, even if you’re just a 17-year-old kid, that you can bring them some form of comfort.

Truthfully, I could never run out of things to say about my Papa. The son of poor Irish immigrants, he owned and operated his own electrical business for the better part of his adult life. Everywhere he went, he commanded respect.

Everyone talks about how similar I am to him, from my looks to my wit to my stubborn industriousness. I never get tired of hearing it.

For the last decade of his life, my Papa suffered from Parkinson’s Disease, a disorder in which the nervous system gradually breaks down over the course of several years.

First, he lost the ability to drive. Then, he could hardly walk without falling. Toward the end, he couldn’t even eat.

Watching the person I grew up worshipping slowly deteriorate was even more traumatic than his actual death.

But when I sat down to write his eulogy, I couldn’t think of what to say. Nothing I could possibly write could make it okay.

I eventually realized, though, that I didn’t have to make it okay.

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I just needed to paint a picture of him as a person and help everyone understand why he was so special.

Every Sunday morning when I was a kid, my Papa brought my family a dozen donuts. A well-respected electrician, he had a road named after him in honor of all the work he’d done in the area. He paid for a uniformed soldier’s hotel room.

Once I changed my mindset, I wrote the whole thing in under an hour.

As intimidating as the eulogy was at first, writing it ended up being a great experience. My Papa was one of the best people I’d ever known, and by the end of my speech, everyone in the church felt the same way.

My Papa’s death left a hole in my life, but a combination of starting college and the passage of time helped close that wound.

***

A little more than a year later, though, my Uncle Dan died, and the wound ripped open all over again.

Like my Uncle Tanky, my Uncle Dan was not really my uncle — he was a longtime best friend of my parents. He was just 50 when he died.

Unlike Uncle Tanky, though, my Uncle Dan didn’t have a larger-than-life personality. He was a bit on the quiet side.

What he lacked in extroversion, though, he made up for in wit.

I’m very proud to take after many of my relatives, but, like any family, I have a few with less-than-ideal personalities. My Uncle Dan’s favorite way to irritate me was, naturally, to compare me to those unsavory relatives.

One time when I was a young teenager, my mom mentioned that I’d become quite interested in politics. My Uncle Dan’s response was to tell me I’m “just like my grandma.”

That may sound sweet, but my grandma is a Trump-supporting Holocaust denier — precisely why he knew that comment would irritate me.

Despite his penchant for sarcasm, my Uncle Dan was one of my parents’ best and most consistent friends. When we would host parties, he was always the one person who would offer to help in the kitchen or clean up everyone’s mess.

Though my Papa is definitely the person I was closest to out of all my losses, my Uncle Dan’s death is the hardest for me to talk about. 

He died by suicide, and it shocked me to my core.

As someone who has toed the line between major depression and suicidal ideation on many occasions, it’s gut-wrenching to think about a loved one reaching that point.

Even more gut-wrenching was listening to my parents wonder whether they’d been good enough friends to him, or whether there was something they could have done.

***

These deaths were the ones that affected me the most, but I’ve lost several other older, more distant family friends and relatives.

In all, I’ve been to about 10 funerals. My dad has been a pallbearer 12 times.

I don’t talk about all the deaths I’ve experienced to garner sympathy — in fact, few people are aware of how many close loved ones I’ve lost. I talk about them because they’ve had a significant impact on my worldview as I’ve grown up.

It was hard for me to resist the anger that crept into my mind as I laid awake late at night.

I didn’t deserve to lose that many of my favorite people before I even became a full adult. My dad didn’t deserve to bury his father and five close friends before the age of 50. My mom didn’t deserve the 10 agonizing years she spent watching her dad slowly die.

I’m not religious, and it’s pretty rare that I wish I was. The period of time following a loss, though, is an exception.

Religious people can find solace after losing loved ones in the idea that they’ve gone to Heaven for the rest of eternity. Deaths that seem inexplicable can simply be chalked up to a part of God’s plan.

To atheists, though, dead people are just gone, and there’s rarely a comforting explanation.

I’ve always had a bit of a pessimistic streak, but it reached its peak during my first two years of college. The combination of the losses I’d recently experienced and the way I struggled with the transition to college made me feel like the universe had a personal vendetta against me.

I know — assuming the universe cares at all what happens to me specifically sounds awfully self-important.

But when you’re being slapped in the face over and over, it starts to feel personal.

***

On May 29, 2018, about four months after my Papa died, I graduated from high school.

During the opening ceremony, in addition to the usual “Pomp and Circumstance,” our school’s band performed the Irish ballad “Danny Boy.”

That isn’t a traditional graduation song at all — in fact, it’s played more often at funerals. But it’d always reminded my mom of my Papa, whose name was Danny.

She took it as a sign that he was there with me that night.

On May 14, 2022, I’ll graduate from Miami.

That’s my Uncle Dan’s birthday.

I still don’t believe in the afterlife, and I likely never will.

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However, I have come to believe that those who die are not truly gone as long as you keep their memories alive.

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That may sound corny, but it’s true.

I was only five years old when my Grandpa Jim died, and I still have vivid memories of the short time we spent together. He worked for the Chicago Sun-Times for several years, so I also attribute my unexpected love for journalism to him.

My cousins on my mom’s side are all significantly younger than me, and their ages when my Papa died range from five to not yet born. But, because we talk about him so often, even those who never got a chance to meet him know who he was.

Learning the power of keeping memories alive has helped me immensely to cope with loss and, ultimately, make peace with the universe.

I’ve also come to realize that focusing solely on the people I’ve lost is doing a disservice to the people I still have – those who will always be there for me through every struggle and triumph.

Sixteen years after my Grandpa Jim died, I still have yet to figure out death. Frankly, I probably never will.

But, experiencing so much death has taught me an important lesson about life: cling tightly to every memory of the people you love.

Because someday, when you least expect it, those memories will be all you have left.