No1: DEATH, THE ELEPHANT
PHOTO BY LUCIA AUERBACH
REBECCA KOPELMAN
In May, my friend tenderly handed me a slim, dog-eared copy of Civilization and its Discontents from his nightstand. “This is Freud,” he told me, flipping through the heavily-annotated pages, “I think you would like him. He’s a realist.”
He said I should take it home and call him when I finished. “Get ready for a total crisis,” he warned.
I started reading on the subway home, scrutinizing each word with such intense focus that my eyes hurt. Over and over, I read the same jargon-filled passages, squinting at the smudged sans-serif type as if it were another language. After a few hours of this, I realized the material was far too intellectual for me–not engaging enough, at least, to induce any crisis–so I instead turned to my friend’s rambling annotations for entertainment.
Soon I gave up on Freud entirely, instead focusing my energy on following the narrative outlined in my friend’s notes-to-self. I began quoting them back to him in conversation, to see if he would notice. “If we ever want to become gods,” I might say offhand, “we must have the humanity beaten out of us.” He didn’t seem to register, though, instead agreeing enthusiastically with his own points. It’s difficult to debate yourself, I suppose.
I had fun with my newfound ability to say exactly what he wanted to hear at any given time. Whenever we verged on argument, I would suddenly whip out a stale point about Freud’s observations of the human condition, and all differences would be forgotten.
I may seem like sort of a manipulative monster, but just understand that when it comes to social interaction I need to find loopholes when I can. I’ve got a knack for saying the absolute worst things at the worst times, so any sort of protection against that is necessary.
When my grandfather was dying last summer, drowning in a stiff hospital bed, I was told that he only weighed 100 pounds. Rather than looking appropriately sympathetic, maybe even shedding a tear, I grimaced and barked out a sharp laugh. “Goals” I said, too loudly. Met with resounding silence, of course, because what kind of person would say that?
Well, me, apparently, but that’s beside the point.
Anyway, my grandfather. Once he died–the day after my sixteenth birthday–I started writing him letters, which I kept in a notebook by my bed, describing my day-to-day activities and earnestly asking how things were in the afterlife, finding myself almost offended when he didn’t respond.
I was struck by the urge to write him exclusively in the early hours of the morning. Being in the dark with only a dead man to talk with triggered a persistent existential dread within me, but I continued the practice anyway.
Close to one in the morning, during one of many sleepless breakdowns, I called my friend–the one who’d lent me Civilization and its Discontents. “I never read your book,” I said between heaving sobs, “I’m sorry I’m so fucking stupid, but I really did try,”
“I know you didn’t read it,” he said groggily, “and you’re not stupid. Go to sleep.” When I didn’t say anything, he hung up, leaving me with only the pale glow of my iPhone. I turned a light on, then off again. My dad knocked on my door to see if I was alright, and I told him I was trying to sleep, if he didn’t mind.
Many nights I could swear I saw my grandfather’s emaciated figure perched atop my desk, eyes glinting in the darkness. Sometimes I would scream, but mostly I would just get up to sleep in the guest room.
I think my dad understood what I was going through, in a way–I would often find him already asleep on the guest bed by the time I got there. We were both close with my grandfather–his father–a high school principal who worked his hardest to remain dignified even while pancreatic cancer tore up his insides. That all fell apart, though, by the time he spoke his last coherent words, around a week before he died. “I’m freezing my nuts off,” he’d muttered, barely conscious. We waited for more, but it never came–that was all we would get out of him.
Now, on particularly difficult nights, when I pad into the kitchen to make a sandwich and stare into the void, I’ll see my dad sitting in the living room watching infomercials and pretending to read Don Quixote. Sometimes I sit with him, flipping idly through the New York Post and attempting conversation.
One such night, at two or three in the morning, an ad for dentures came on TV, featuring a hip silver-haired old woman and her barrel-chested husband, both of whom smiled too brightly for comfort.
“I didn’t know grandpa had dentures until he was on his deathbed,” my dad said, staring straight ahead.
“You’ll tell me if you get dentures, right?”
“I’ll never let you find out, if I can help it.”
“Oh.”
“Nothing personal, it’s just that...” he paused, deepening his voice “‘I grow old, I grow old, I shall wear my trousers rolled.’”
“You said it wrong. It’s ‘I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.’” I could feel myself being obnoxious.
“You might be right.” He got up with a fake yawn, rolling his eyes almost imperceptibly. “Anyway, I think I’ll head to bed now. You should probably do the same.” I watched as he went to his room, hobbling on his bad hip.
His halting parkinsonian shuffle was growing more prominent, I noticed, and he clutched his stiff left hand to his chest like a small animal’s corpse. He looked like an invalid, and I briefly pictured him in a hospital bed, speechless, useless, helpless, just as my grandfather had been.
My father was to be buried in the Kopelman family plot in New Jersey, he told me, and my mother would have her ashes either spread in the Hudson River or kept in a coffee can in my closet.
Where would I go?
I spent that night in front of the TV, occasionally scribbling out bits and pieces of my will on a nearby napkin, which I ripped up once I saw the sun rising, suddenly embarrassed by my morbid obsession.
