All That You Leave Behind: A Memoir(5)

They led Monie and me into a small waiting room where a young bearded guy was seated. Apparently he was the one who’d found my dad’s unconscious body on the floor of the Times newsroom. He had tried to do CPR but was unsuccessful. He looked down. None of us had a single thing to say. Boxes of tissues littered the top of the generic wooden coffee tables. I reached for one.

I excused myself and went to the bathroom to call Jasper.

“Is he okay?”

I didn’t yell or scream the worst words I have ever said out loud. Instead, I whispered them, willing them back into my head, but there they were.

“He died.”

I threw up immediately.

“Oh my God, babe, oh my God,” Jasper said over and over. His words rang in my ears.

I sat on the floor in the hospital bathroom trying to compose myself. An impossible task. I started a mental Rolodex, automatically flipping through all of the things my dad would not be around for.

         My twenty-seventh birthday



     My first film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival in two months



     Walking me down the aisle



     The career we’d cleverly plotted together





One by one these thoughts crushed me and my vision of the future.

But then I realized my mental Rolodex was missing something important. What about him? His dreams, his goals? So much grander than my own.

         Growing old together with the love of his life, Jill



     Seeing my baby sister, Madeline, graduate from college



     Seeing my twin, Meagan, graduate from her PhD program



     Publishing his next book



     Teaching another class at Boston University



     Achieving his private, long-sought-after goal—a Pulitzer





What happens to all of these dreams when someone dies?

I asked Jasper to come to the hospital before he could even offer. I needed his body next to mine. Everyone was silent when I walked back into the waiting room, looking for Jill. When she appeared, our faces gave it away. She immediately looked down. She reached for no one as there was no solace to be had.

A doctor asked if we wanted last rites performed. We did. Dad’s editor Bill Brink was there to say the Times would be putting out a statement.

“But I have to call Meagan and Madeline and David’s family,” Jill said quickly.

“Can you do it now?”

I glanced down at my phone and found a text message from a former co-worker: “Hey, heard some scary news about your dad. I hope it isn’t true.” How did he know? Why is he texting me? I barely know him.

Apparently during the franticness of the moments between my dad’s collapse and the medics arriving, a reporter at the Times tweeted that my dad had been found unconscious; she’d assumed the news was already public. Twitter had been notified.

And there it was. My first feeling that shattered the shock. Anger. Raw, seething, all-encompassing anger. What the fuck. I haven’t even seen my dad’s body and already people are sending me texts like this. I considered smashing my phone on the ground.

But there was no time for acting out; I had to go in and see my dad. Jill and I followed the doctor into the room where his body lay. His mouth and eyes were open, as if he were in mid-thought, about to say something. It was horrifying. Jill broke the silence: “Oh, sweeto, what happened?” She wrapped her arms around him and sobbed and then backed away, unable to hold on. I lay my head on his chest, but it didn’t feel like him. His body was stiff and foreign. Jill and I held hands and said a prayer.

A hospital worker came in and informed us that the priest was running late and they would have to move “him” to free up the emergency trauma room.

Meanwhile, we needed to let our family know, and fast, before the Times released their announcement. The raw anger returned. Couldn’t I have at least thirty seconds to comprehend what had happened before the Internet chimed in?

Helplessness is a savage feeling on a night like this. There were so many “jobs” to do, and yet I could barely summon the strength to call my twin. She picked up on the third ring. I was at a loss for words, so I opened with the cliché that the movies have ingrained in me: “I need for you to sit down.”

“No,” she answered. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“I am at the hospital and there was an accident. Dad passed away.”

Her shrieks pounded against my ears. I didn’t know what else to call it other than an accident because to me, it felt like one, a terrible accident. No one just drops dead.

The New York Times sent out an alert; NPR did the same. His death trended on Twitter. The floodgates opened. I was split down my center by hundreds of texts, emails, and voicemails. It was beyond intrusive, and forced me to dissociate. Every minute my phone buzzed, and I would look down to see if it was a call I needed to take. All of the people finding out my dad was dead from a notification on their phone.

Some of my close friends showed up at the hospital and helped us back to Monie’s house. Wine was uncorked, and slowly the shock became grief. Two months before I had secretly started drinking again after a nine-month stint of abstinence. I felt an unabashed need to drink my way through both what I’d just witnessed, and whatever came next. No one noticed. Or at least they didn’t say anything. It was not the time for reprimands.