July 24th, 2023 - The Maths Tutor
Dear TNY,
***The following message was written yesterday. I debated about posting it. It seemed…early? I wrote it right after I received the information about him entering hospice care. In one light, it feels like giving up to feel these feels, to write this letter. I was accosted by the hospice information yesterday and it was a normal FTNY Monday and the feels fell out. In another light, I know what he has been doing the last ten years and I know that when the doctors are saying that his organs are failing and there’s nothing they can do other than manage that to closure, and when that’s coupled with just how fucking rapidly this has escalated, it feels like this letter is the truth. The unwanted truth, but the truth nonetheless. So, the man below has not passed. Yet. The word is that it is inevitable. That’s the word today. So that’s what we are going with. If this motherfucker springs forth from his hospital bed like Gene Wilder’s Wonka when he’s walking to the gates, the amount of embarrassment over writing this letter will be overshadowed by the fact that he lives. And he’d be chuffed to bits to read this anyway. So there you go, a day late, but with full conviction in the amount of love this letter holds.***
Today is my birthday. I am 42 years of age. Douglas Adams’ answer to everything. And I don’t know what to say about that. Because, guys, it’s been a weird two weeks. Relationship-wise. Kid-wise. Life-wise. There’s more to say, but I’m only thinking about one thing.
I need to talk about a fella named Ben. Ben has found his way into these letters before. He’s been one of my best friends since 2012 (a pivotal year in my life, for certain). And today, he has entered hospice care. We aren’t going to discuss how or why that happened. Because to trace those lines out, bring those points to ground, will not fix the issue. Nothing can fix this issue. A friend asked me to tell him this isn’t happening. But I cannot because it cannot unhappen. This is what’s happening now. Ben is going to be a little late from now on. Or, as his voicemail message on his phone says (in his goddamn voice): He’s gone, man; he’s with his people; he is gone and he is with his people; he is with his people and he is gone. So, I guess he is with his people now, or he is packing up the things we don’t know about until it’s our time and getting ready to link into the beam to transport to his people. But there are some things left undone here while he is getting ready for the next phase of existence, in which I hope he has only love. Only love this time, Ben. No pain.
As to what’s left undone, for instance, he won’t be finishing Legos with his youngest son, as he was supposed to a couple of days ago. Nor will he be able to go bowling after the Legos are complete. He won’t finish the book he was writing about God knows what. He will no longer pound on tables, doors, or sofas with enthusiasm so exuberant that it must be channeled through fisticuffs with furniture. He will no longer open his heart to special needs children or adults, remaining calm and patient for them. For that matter he will no longer do the same for all his adult students at his work (work that he will never go to again) as they struggle. Nor will he hold my, or any of his other friend’s, heart(s) while we struggle, as he was wont to do. He will no longer be a ray of real, true love beaming it out at the world, and he will never not give any to himself again. He will no longer not get on airplanes or not drive outside his little town of Palmer or not visit people because he was a crazy little critter, filled with anxiety about the world. He will no longer walk the banks of the Knik, and he won’t see what happens to the eagles who have roosted there over the years, moving from tree to tree, nor will he know what happens to any of the other birds he kept track of, Corvus corvax among the highest tier of his favorites. He will no longer hold down that chair near the window of The Moosehead, annotating the world as he saw it, a place of savage love too great for him to bear, in notebooks he will no longer write in. He will not impatiently zoom around Fred Meyer, gathering only the best ingredients to make cacio e pepe or Bolognese. He will no longer write stories about the Ancient Greeks superimposed on our current world; Diogenes in therapy, Plato working at McDonald’s. He will no longer dance with jumping abandon, bowling over other people’s children at weddings. He will no longer be able to help me find the book, of which he read snippets to me from so long ago, in which a man documented what were the best and worst things to wipe one’s ass with (the neck of a goose, that is well downed, if you hold her head betwixt your legs). He will never meet his grandkids, leaving behind three children. Nor will he see the men those children become. He will never again quote Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics about stretchmarks and herald their brilliance. He will no longer give me hugs on the rare chance I was able to receive them as he lived in a quiet and far pocket of the world. He will never again talk about the stench of his summertime feet from wandering his little village perennially clad in sandals. For that matter, he will never send a text like “Crab Rangoon Drizzles” again. He will never contribute to the group text we have had for a decade, not ever leaving a voice memo again, not even ones where he rants about people in line at the coffeeshop not understanding how to order coffee. He will never cry at the end of every phone call when you say you love him, nor will he then choke out the words “I really appreciate that, man.” He will never tell me any of his batshit stories again, like that time he traveled to Hattiesburg, MS to bury his dad’s ashes in his mother’s grave, instead hastily dumping them on the grass in front of her tombstone and booking it. He will never eat dumb fucking mozzarella sticks at dumb fucking Blue Fox in dumb fucking Anchorage, nor get in a dumb fucking cab and ride to dumb fucking Le Roy’s (actually, Leroy’s but we church it the fuck up, guys) to eat a dumb fucking Montecristo with dumb fucking strawberry gel at dumbfuck O’clock for no dumb fucking reason at all. There is an endless list of things he’ll never do, because he’ll no longer be or do again. The only thing he’ll do, from now on, is not. He’ll never, forever.
And that’s really fucking infuriating, Ben. I miss you. We all fucking miss you, man. I cannot express in this trite medium how fucking badly I miss your stupid fucking laugh and Buddy Jesus style and erudite chats about the dumbest shit. I can’t fucking contain it, man. You are such a big part of my fabric. One of the thickest tethers holding my stupid, pitiful life to this earth. And you do that for so many others. I don’t want to know a world where you aren’t in it, man. And I know that sentiment is shared.
But, TNY, he will no longer be in pain. He will no longer be sad. Or feel alone. He will only be love.
I want to leave you with some of his own words, written for something long ago that, somewhat, helped this whole FTNY project come about. He was asked to write a description of himself. This is what our man, Ben, had to say circa 2016:
See the man. Filthy and ragged humping along the trails and streets of a frozen Palmer, Alaska. He wears a pitifully thin beard and dresses in tie-dye like an aberrant hippie dislodged from an open-air music festival. He mutters to himself, tales of woe, tales of lust, as he weaves through the drinkeries of his hamlet. Nights he lies in stuporous drink as he snores away a dreamless yet troubled sleep. He could have been something, but he’s not.
I didn’t tweak this at all, but what I would say differently is that he thought he could have been something, and now he is not, but for the people in his life, in a way he, sadly, could never hear, he was fucking everything.
I love you, big fella. Wherever you are now, I hope it’s so much better than here. I’ll be writing to you, don’t worry. Dispatches from terra firma. This isn’t the last time you’ll hear from me. I love you too much to let you go, big guy. Not that easily.
As for “The Maths Tutor”? What does a story matter at a time like this? But, I will say I was distracted and had to leave midway to call his hospital room so his special lady could hold the phone up to his ear so I could say goodbye (I could not say the word “goodbye”). But I think the story is good. It did what I did not expect, which is she got stood up and the trajectory of her life changed. I thought the writing was clean. Could have been compressed more. Could have lost a little weight is all I’m saying. But it wasn’t terrible. But again, I’m a little fucking distracted.
Anyway, I have to go be an adult now. And hurt while doing it. Normal life, I guess.
Nick
