The Obituary I Wish I Wrote
A List of Things That I Cannot Ask You About...
In Chronological Order According To Your Life, I Think.
Being Born In A Taxi Cab During A Blizzard. Your Blond Hair That Fell Out (Your Eyelashes, Later). That Birthday Where You Ate All The Cakes. The Haitian Woman Who Read Your Future From Molten Lead. Weekends With Your Grandmother.
Trapping Wolverines On Long Island. Being Dragged Behind Your Brother's Bike. Breaking Your Leg In Central Park. Getting Kicked Out Of The Boy Scouts. Your Mother's Fish Allergy And Saturday Breakfasts.
Boeing Trying To Buy You. Grandpa Phil In Cambodia. Your Time At The Newspaper. Bar Mitzvah Day When They Pulled Your Nails From His Skull. Beating Bobby Fischer. Skipping Two Grades. Getting Beat Up.
How You Learned About Sex. Surfing By The Bridge. Your Summers At The Deli. Learning The Secrets To Binge Drinking. Your Job At The Library. Paying Rent To Phil And Helen. Your Pranks (The IceCream And The Canals. The Car And The Flag Pole. The Thermite Bombs). Your First Car. The Rail Gun.
Why Nixon Is The Most Evil Man. Phil As A “Salesman”. The House Without Furniture. Phil In The
South Pacific. His Other Life. Phil's Attempted Suicide And Your Brother's Lisp. Grandpa And JFK. His Time In The Asylum. The Assassination.
Cooper Union. Engineering Awards. Weekends At That One Place With Manny. Sleeping With The Hawaiian Princess. Getting Kicked Out. Community College. Your Suicidal Period. Hofstra. Journalism.
Dropping Out Of Yale Law. University Of South Carolina. The CIA Prep Program. Breaking Your Neck The First Time. Your Coma.
Waking Up Paralyzed And Learning To Speak. Returning Home In Casts. The Three Months Between Meeting My Mother And Marrying Her. DC And Thunderstorms. The Foreign Service. The Rifle (Or, Why You Never Went To Senegal). Greece. The Motorcycle. The Bomb And The Mustache On The Roof. George Destroying His Knee. Moving Back.
The Firebombings Outside Your Windows. Don't Step In The Blood. The Oil Rig In Borneo. The First Time A Gun Jammed In your Face. Negotiating With The Basque Separatists. Suspected Of Robbery In Germany.
Your Newsletters. Newsweek. Forbes. The Books You Published And The Books You Never Published. Advertising. Your Poetry. Buying The House In The Country. Making Those Stupid Investments. Being The Man Behind The Curtain (How'd That Work Out For You?). Your Second Broken Neck. Gillian. Father's Love Feast, 1998. Quitting For Dummies And Destroying Your Hand. Making Up Stories. After School At Friendly's. My Education. Gillian's Thumb (You Should Have Told Her). How You Escaped The South Tower. How You Knew About Borges. Why You And Gillie Never Got Better. Why You Never Paid Your Taxes. That Time You Told Me You'd Rather Kill Yourself Than Fade.
Why You Still Forced Me Out After You Slept That Whole Summer. Why You Shook So Violently In The ER. Why You Didn't Want Your Daughter To Come Home. Why You Gave Up And Chose To Leave.
How Many Of Your Stories Are True.
What Love Looks Like And All Those Jokes.