While sitting around the campfire that night with my fellow scouts, I forced myself to pretend nothing extraordinary had happened. I did what I did best: I lied. I told them about the rock I sat on. I told them I could see them all in the distance, and that I had waved. I made the rock significantly lower and lied about the descent. They were going to laugh at me anyway. They told me I was lame. My scout leader laughed at me, too, as he applied bandages to Keith’s badly-wounded knee. I thought his injuries would be worse; I felt bad for wishing they were.
In a moment of weakness, I asked them if they saw the kid with the backward baseball hat.
“There’s nobody else near us,” they told me. “What are you talking about? Now he’s seeing things. What a d-bag.” More high fives. More laughs from the scout leader.
From that day on the wall in Joshua Tree, death became something that was never far from my thoughts or my experiences. I thought about it pretty much every day. Multiple times a day. Needless to say, death was front of mind as I sat in the back corner of the synagogue, watching my own funeral.
CHAPTER TWO
Adopted at birth, a professional football coach sets out to find his birth parents. His dad, who never knew he had a son, turns out to be the coach’s mentor of nearly three decades.1
I never cared much for organized religion. Still, the rituals, traditions, and community remained intriguing. Raised best described as a cultural Jew, I liked the way I felt in a synagogue or gathered around a Passover table. I liked the way cultural rituals like the seder plate or searching for a broken piece of matzoh brought family, friends, and strangers together. It created a safer space to think about what a friend’s young son once described as “life’s bigger questions.”
I just never liked the idea that I was supposed to believe in only one thing or another. I didn’t have the kind of belief that some sky spirit could be all knowing. And I really didn’t subscribe to the idea that all things could be explained away by “God’s plan.”
I did the Bar Mitzvah thing, collected my money, and gave a speech about being afraid of nuclear war. Both before and after that, I felt a connection to something. It felt like an energy, which would much later be defined for me as the Universe. I liked that. I liked thinking about the Universe as energy without having to drift into religion or defend my feelings and uncertainty about God. But I remained uncomfortable talking about it for fear of being labeled a New-Age weirdo. Sharing my spiritual thoughts and desires made me feel like an outcast around my friends, family, and, well, just about anyone. In my world, you were either religious or you weren’t. Anything in between was freaky. And “spiritual”? Ugh.
Privately, I felt like I was part of something bigger. Like I was a kind of connective tissue. A root system. A messenger. I was taught to believe that faith and religion were conjoined twins. I didn’t think I was allowed to have faith without religion. As I grew older, I’d roll my eyes at people who called themselves spiritual healers; and yet, it was what I think I wanted most to be. It was how I felt about myself. Instead, I lied to myself and built a career as far from that as possible. I was surrounded by testosterone and bravado, devoid of authenticity—and found myself in rooms filled with men named “Bro.”
On my own, I sat in on different services. Buddhist. Baptist. Episcopalian. I didn’t always believe what the others in the room believed, but I felt like I could hide in my little corner and pray the way I needed to pray. It was more meditative than religious. It was spiritual. Reflective. It was faith. My faith.
I liked Temple Beth Am. It was different. There was no stained glass. There was no bima upon which the services were performed. It wasn’t even a real synagogue. Temple Beth Am was an empty, open ground floor in a nondescript, white office building that the congregation rented for services. When you walked through the building lobby and into the temporary synagogue, smiling members of the youth group distributed well-worn, hand-me-down prayer books. So many pages bent or torn. Some covers even ripped. It didn’t matter. Temple Beth Am was also missing the most prevalent trait found in all of my previous Jewish experiences: guilt. It had no history of “that’s not how we’ve always done it.” The place felt raw and rough around the edges because it was. A blue-collar kind of Jewish ethic for its white-collar congregants. Culture over religion. I could be invisible and anonymous there. I could be spiritual and accepted there. Nobody cared.
Temple Beth Am was the anti-synagogue. I felt as much at home there as I ever had in such a place. I felt it immediately when, sometime in my early forties, I opened the generic glass door for the first time. When I found it, I thought that was where I would finally let go of a past that haunted me. I didn’t believe I could pray away my mistakes, but I did believe I could find peace within myself. For myself. There, I could accept and celebrate that I floated off a rock at Joshua Tree. I could forgive myself for the pain I caused others. I could forgive myself for the pain I caused myself. I could talk to my God without judgment. Even with no clue as to what God meant to me. Even as others in the room may have been completely clear on what God meant to them. Their God didn’t have to be my God.
My funeral was about to start when I settled into a back corner as far removed as possible from the ceremony that would take place in front. It was where I always sat. As if I were creating a safe distance from any religious formality that might possibly occur in the orchestra seats. Like avoiding the front row at SeaWorld. Even in a place as chill as Temple Beth Am, I didn’t want any religion to splash on me. As the light outside poured through the double-pane office windows, I felt cold.
The room was packed with mourners representing stages of my life—even Keith and Billy, who were with me in Joshua Tree decades earlier. They were the two scouts I kept in touch with. I was always good at that. Holding onto friends and relationships. Even the ones I should have let go of. Goddamn, I sucked at letting go. Keith had scratches on his face, and his arm was in a sling—the result of a mountain biking accident I read about on Facebook.
Almost everyone was kind enough to dispense with the traditional formalities of black suits, black dresses, black whatever. I wasn’t much for black clothes, and these people, my people, filled the room with color. My parents sat in the front row with their respective significant others. They had divorced shortly after my not-quite-near-death experience. I was only eleven, yet I was old enough to know they had no business being together. I didn’t know what happened behind the closed doors of moms and dads. But at eleven, I felt like I knew how love should look and sound. And I knew it didn’t sound or look anything like my parents.
My mom, dressed in black from head to toe, cried as my sister started to speak. Six years older than me, my sister told stories that masked her insecurities and regrets by giving the impression of a closeness we never had. There was the story about helping me with my homework when I was a freshman in high school and she was in college. Yes, I had called for help, but it never came. I didn’t really need the help; I was just trying to find a way to connect with her. I always desperately wanted to connect with her.
Then she told the story of my first kiss. I was twelve, and she knew I had a big crush on her friend, who, in my young mind, was a perfect goddess. Helen was the reason I loved brunettes. She was an otherworldly high school senior who ran track and drove a black Mazda RX-7 with a license plate frame that said “CATCH ME” on top and “IF YOU CAN” on the bottom. I could barely speak anytime Helen came home with my sister.
One time, as the story goes, Helen knocked on the front door when my sister wasn’t home. I mumbled something about nothing, and she said she would wait in my sister’s room. I went back into mine. After a few minutes, she knocked on my bedroom door. She started asking questions about my soccer team and the teachers I had. I managed to answer, and she moved onto my bed where I was working. And she kissed me. Just like that. As she walked out, she said, “You’re a great kid. If only you were a little older.”
As my sister told this story at my funeral, I was hearing for the first time that she had set up the whole thing. She and Helen conspired to bring me a second of joy that lasted a lifetime. I had no idea. Everyone in the room laughed. But seriously, had I known, I would have given my sister my allowance for life. I would have done the dishes forever. I would have been nicer to her. I guess it wasn’t really our fault—at six years apart, we were more like two only children growing up in the same house. We were barely part of the same generation, and it wasn’t like our parents modeled healthy love and respect. But she tried, and I missed it. I fucking missed it.
Damn. What else did I miss?
My sister walked back to her seat, and my mom sobbed. My dad looked at her, rolled his eyes, and whispered something to his current wife. She shushed him. I knew it was a sarcastic, inappropriate comment. He did that when he was uncomfortable. My parents had been divorced for longer than they had been married, but nothing had changed. At least they didn’t fight anymore.
After the prayers, a song or two, and a few nice words from the rabbi, Dr. Timmy was the last to speak. That’s exactly how I wanted it. I appreciated that my parents figured that out. Tall, chiseled, and always with what I called his “nine o’clock shadow” because five o’clock was just too early for Timmy, he would have been a cliché from HotSurgeons.com.
Timmy was my longest-tenured best friend. There were others, like Larry and Greg from childhood and Adam and Dan more recently, but Timmy had been around the longest and was the most consistent. He never took it for granted. Neither of us did. He was best friend emeritus. We lived together in college. We lived together after college. And in the thirty-plus years we had known each other, we never, ever, ever lost touch. That’s what separated him from all others. If anyone knew, truly knew, where all the bodies were buried, no pun intended, it was Timmy. He should speak last. I was glad he spoke last.
Timmy normally wore designer jeans and a designer T-shirt to perfectly compliment his designer shave, and this day was no different. Despite the setting, his shirt, except for the front as fashion dictated, remained untucked. From my invisible spot situated in the back of the synagogue, I approved. I would have been especially disappointed if Timmy had worn a suit.
As I looked around the room, I felt sad. Maybe that was the cold I was feeling. Maybe in death, feelings become temperature. I don’t know. I started feeling like I was going to miss these people. I was going to miss Timmy. Still, I wondered which of the women seated in the temple Timmy would fuck. He got laid at every wedding we ever attended together—even my ill-conceived, quickly-annulled mistake when I was in my early twenties.
Ever the romantic, I forever wanted to marry someone I had just met. So I did. Only it wasn’t such a good idea. Stacy and I turned out to have nothing in common beyond an insatiable desire to fuck. Anywhere and everywhere. But when the heat wore off, we were a disaster. Wasn’t her fault. Wasn’t my fault. Timmy got laid at that impromptu wedding under a table, I think. Seemed kind of beautiful to get laid at my funeral. He’d do it with grace. It was his gift. I’d bet on Leslie. They always had a connection and were always teasing each other. This was the perfect opportunity to consummate the perfect friends-with-benefits relationship. One last chance to be Timmy’s wingman, I smiled at Leslie. I was going to miss being Timmy’s wingman.
He spoke. “The nickname by which you knew Erik Bernstein immediately told the story of when and how you met him. If you called him Skippy, you knew him as a little kid who started skipping before he walked. If you knew Skipper, you went to college together, where he developed a reputation for skipping more classes than he attended. That gave way to Link in honor of all the time he spent playing Nintendo games and then Berns, Bernie, Bernsie, and Bernstein throughout his career. I called him Shirl.”
It’s true. I loved nicknames. Each one a perfectly conceived shield. A wall. An NFL-sized defensive lineman who kept most people one step further away from knowing me. But I called him by a nickname! We’re buddies! They were a purposeful, false intimacy. Because if you call someone by a nickname, you can be fooled into thinking you’re that much closer.
“He didn’t let many in. Not all the way. But Erik always gave you just enough to feel special. All these nicknames made sure of that. Today, though, we take away the nicknames and we reveal the man. Today, we honor . . . Erik.”
Jesus Christ, Timmy. Fuck me. What’s with all this intimacy? Where the fuck is that coming from? I rarely let people know me and often felt like my loneliest and safest place on the planet was a room packed full of people who were supposed to be friends. An intuitive once told me that I lived life on the outside looking in, more an observer than a participant. She said I lived a life filled with fear. As a result, I talked a much bigger game than I lived.
She was right. I had a closet full of masks that hid my true self—my true identity. They removed any chance that I might get hurt. They also removed any chance that I might be loved. They helped me avoid by creating a void. There’s that old “if I only knew then what I know now” cliché. Well, fuck. It’s never truer than after you die. John Lennon sang of instant karma. As Timmy spoke, I experienced instant regret.
He continued. “Erik loved the movie Cocktail. God only knows why. He must have watched it a hundred times during the years we lived together. There’s a scene in the movie when Bryan Brown’s character bets that Tom Cruise’s character has some kind of business book under the bar. Erik was that way with books about the human spirit. He read them constantly.”
Timmy took a moment to choke back some tears as his voice cracked uncharacteristically.
“My God, how he loved people. He loved their ability to overcome, to be torn down, and to rise again. He loved their ability to create. He loved vulnerability. He loved when they ‘put themselves out there,’ as he’d say. He marveled at the singer-songwriter playing to an empty bar, yet still performing as though he were in front of a packed house at Carnegie Hall. He read those books because he wanted to be one of those people. He wanted to move people. He wanted to inspire them. And he did. Even if he could never accept it. He wanted to be one of those people. And he was. Even if he couldn’t see it.”
I looked around and saw heads nodding. My friends dabbed their eyes with the sleeves of their shirts. This was kind of how I imagined it when I was on that wall in Joshua Tree. Except everyone was older now.
Tim was still talking. “He always said he wanted to know what it felt like to be whole. To belong. Because he never really felt like he did. He was always searching. Always wanting to ask bigger questions. So he had these books hidden around his house the way an alcoholic hides his booze. He didn’t want anyone to know. Frankly, I thought this search he was on was kind of ridiculous. As a dyed-in-the-wool-no-apologies atheist, I’m a science addict. Erik would try to talk to me about this universal energy shit, and I just couldn’t help but roll my eyes. He made me insane with ‘the Universe this’ and ‘the Universe that.’”
I had tortured him with my talk of the Universe. He tolerated it. I remember sitting on the worn-out leather stools at The Gym, each of us nursing our brown drinks and half-assedly watching a game on the TV above the bar when I asked him if he ever thought about death. “What the fuck kind of question is that?” he asked. “Is this one of your universal energy quizzes?”
“Never mind,” I told him. “Just kidding.” I got up from my seat, put a bar napkin on top of my glass, and told him I was going to go outside to watch the cars.
I loved watching cars from an early age. I always said you could learn much about a community at a four-way stop. It was like a social experiment. Cars told stories of affluence. Of influence. Of leaders and followers. The number of rolling stops gives away privilege. The full-blown “fuck you” of the Mercedes SUV driver who doesn’t even bother to wait his rightful turn screams entitlement. The number of Teslas told of trends and rich former hippies. And the number of really beat-up cars that were clearly uninsured told a story of hired help.
