I have never been to Israel. I am not an Israeli, nor have I played one on TV. That said, I occasionally read clumsily from right to left. I've had trees planted in my honor, somewhere in or near Haifa. I have Israeli savings bonds that I’ve cashed when running out of money during writers’ strikes. I'm fairly skilled at seaside paddle ball and low-stakes backgammon. And I'm known to consume more hummus than anyone besides the Zohan.
But what makes me seem most Israeli, besides being blessed with an unpronounceable Sephardic surname, is that I’ve recently come to embrace one of the philosophical hallmarks of Israeli existence: That death is a regular part of life. Not something that sits apart from life. At least, I think that’s one of their defining principles. I don’t know if I mentioned this earlier, but I’m not actually Israeli. Don’t let my single continuous eyebrow, my almost preternatural dreidel prowess or my ability to haggle over a piece of whitefish fool you.
The truth is, my understanding of the Israeli view of life and death comes not from any Talmudic scholarship. But rather from a very surface, Wikipedia-level knowledge of their 4 consecutive May holidays known casually and collectively as “the Yoms’” as all four begin with the word Yom. Within one week, Holocaust remembrance and the mourning of fallen soldiers are observed side by side with their fully-exuberant independence day. It’s a profound reminder that we cannot truly experience joy without also acknowledging life’s sorrows. And that death, grief and mourning are a normal part of everyone’s life cycle.
On a personal level, I experience my own version of the Yoms every Spring. My wedding anniversary is May 26. My daughter’s birthday is June 2. And my wife’s birthday is June 6. However, every year, wedged in that narrow window between those two birthday celebrations is the anniversary of my father’s suicide on June 5. It’s an annual reminder that life and death go hand and hand. That often-times our celebration of good times is not unfettered or existing in a festive bubble. Instead, like in all of life, we are frequently forced to compartmentalize, the happy and sad. And even more likely, to feel conflicting, almost warring emotions at the same time.
This Spring, those competing feelings were even more pronounced because the time around that week also featured my daughter’s senior prom, my kids’ middle and high school graduations. And the sudden, inexplicable passing of a beloved friend and work colleague.
I’ve written extensively in these pages about coping with grief over the past couple years. And I can say with absolute moral certainty, that in the last couple weeks, I used almost zero per cent of my own advice. One of my favorite thesis statements has long been “Don’t beat yourself up. There is no one way to grieve.” Yet, for the past few weeks, I’ve spent an inordinate amount of brain power, wondering if what I’m feeling is the “proper” thing to feel. Am I dwelling too long over the death of a colleague I’ve known for almost two decades? Or am I callously getting over it too quickly like an inured jackass and resuming my normal daily life with too much facility, also like an inured jackass? Neither? Both?
Now I swear to God, I’m not making this about me. I promise. Okay, maybe a little. But I do think that some of my reactions are probably similar to those that other people experience. Whether or not they conform precisely to our Kugler-Ross checklist. Besides the sheer shock and disbelief and the deep compassion for the family, it feels inevitable at times of loss to start thinking of our own mortality. And in the onslaught of beautiful testimonials that followed in the wake of our friend’s loss, it also seems inevitable that we start to wonder how others will speak of us when our time comes. Have we lived a life of meaning and kindness and achievement and deep connection? And even if we have, is there any way we can ever measure up to the universally-beloved goodness of the friend who went before us? All of this is probably a long, blowhardy way of saying, whatever small legacy we leave on the world will be defined by those we leave behind. Have I been good? Have I been kind? Did I ever pick up a check at Red Robin? And even while asking it, why do I feel like a narcissistic, self-centered douche for even asking these questions in my own head?
Another response that I didn’t expect but that I’ve heard from several others is feeling an unexpected smallness about our place in the universe. In life (or at least work life), we are encouraged to carry on, get back to the business of living. Or in my case, writing jokes for TV’s Uncle Jesse. But in doing so, even at a properly healthy and appropriate pace, you can’t help but think “Our friend died and life goes on, the show goes on. He’s missed clearly. Obviously. But how small are we in the scheme of things, that a day after our passing, no matter how much people may be hurting, things just carry on without us?”
The grief that those of us at Fuller House last week was unlike any I’d ever gone through. I’m not saying it was worse than what anyone else felt. But there is something so specific about losing a colleague in the workplace. And maybe other than Apollo astronauts or Chilean coal miners, it’s hard to imagine a workplace more intimate than a TV writers’ room. And for a member of that group to just suddenly disappear— not taking a week in the Cape, not touring colleges their kid won’t get into- but to cease existing, it’s the sudden extinguishing of a voice you’d grown accustomed to hearing all day, every day.
Again, I’m no expert on grieving. But it does seem one of the brain’s most common coping mechanisms is a combo platter of denial/ delusion/ magical thinking. I wrote a little about this phenomenon in a well-known medical quarterly, better known as my Facebook feed:
“ I'll admit it. I spent much of the first three days just staring at Marsh's empty chair in the writers' room.
I'm not entirely certain why. I honestly think I half-expected the chair to start tossing off bon mots or elegant story fixes. Maybe it would regale us with a Python quote. Or an arcane Beatles' trivia question, like "Which song did John consider the first heavy metal song? Ticket to Ride (I eventually learned).
Mind you, this was lot to ask of a chair. But desperate times can begat desperate magical thinking. I'd never before lost a writer or a friend in the middle of a season. Let alone the one writer in the room who was most vital, most alive, the glue that held together an always fragile dynamic.
I'm sure Marsh would've chided me for my naked emotionality. (Maybe sobbing at a stop sign upon hearing "I'll Follow the Sun", like I did, would be granted a special Beatles' exemption). At the very least, he'd be disappointed by the lack of professionalism that comes with looking to a chair to try to help me do my job.
But such is the complex nature of grief. So much of it is rooted in blanket disbelief. And I, without reason or rationality, hoped the chair or better yet the man himself would bust in one day and explain this had all been an elaborate ruse, the makings of a potent New Yorker short story.
How else to explain suddenly, inexplicably losing a friend and colleague at the height of his powers. And the height of our need for those powers.
Eventually, by week's end, his chair was replaced by the vase of flowers above. So on the one hand, we are no longer being teased with the prospect of a magical return. On the other hand, they still serve as a persistently bleak reminder, that no matter how much joy and goodness and laughter he brought to our lives, it's time to accept he's really not coming back.”
Thinking that you just saw your friend. Believing that he would magically reappear. Clinging to the notion that it must be a bad dream, a clerical error or the world’s most elaborate prank for the world’s cruelest bloopers show. These are all responses that I’ve found myself processing repeatedly, wrestling with constantly. So was the recurring thought that the memorial thrown for my friend Marsh was actually a party where he’d appear as the guest of honor. And truthfully, the eulogies were so open-hearted, so vivid, so successful at bottling his essence, that they did nothing to dispel my ill-conceived belief that he’d triumphantly enter Stage 15 at Warner Brothers to offer the final thoughts of the evening. Why wouldn’t he? He could not have felt more present in the memories recounted, in the tears shed, in the oft-repeated refrain “You know, he’d have liked this more anyone.” Everyone he ever knew saying literally the most beautiful things about him—yessir. There was nothing for him not to like.
I was talking to a fellow writer that day who compared this feeling of sudden loss to the HBO series The Leftovers. Mike had lost writer friends to heart attacks, to suicide, even to the horrors of 9-11. And in all these cases, his friends were literally just here on Earth and then instantly, like those Leftovers characters, snatched irrevocably from this realm. In the blink of an eye, gone forever. How jarring. How unbearably painful and disconcerting for those left behind to pick up the pieces.
So how do we cope? I don’t know. I’m not a doctor. I’m not even Israeli. A speaker at the memorial, who was a 70’s teen idol, but not Scott Baio or Leif Garrett, offered one clue. He told the story of losing his own father, but not really losing him. He spoke poignantly about how his dad stayed alive in his stories, in his dreams, in the anecdotes that his dad’s friends never seem to have a shortage of. I know that was true when my own dad passed suddenly. In Marsh’s case, I’ve already seen how he will live on in the legacy of kindness that ran through truly every social media post, every behind -the-wall email exchange between bereft friends, even a touching on-air tribute from Conan O’Brien. Once again, this is not about me. Or us. But we are not characters experiencing grief in a carefully-crafted narrative. We are real people processing real grief in real time. And I defy anyone to listen to the words spoken of a dearly departed pal and not, at least in the short term, vow to live a better, gentler, more meaningful life.
I know, I’m rambling. Maybe it’s another means of coping— your friend can’t really be gone if you keep talking about him or her. Or more likely, I just don’t have a suitable ending. Definitely not a happy one. That’s because the main message of this piece is that the only certainty in life is death. Oh, and go to Israel. Because that would suck to die suddenly and say to yourself “ Hey, I never went to a Tel Aviv discotheque.” It would certainly suck if that was your final thought.
The shock and suddenness of Marsh’s passing is indisputably awful. And yet, it is a fate that waits for all of us. And everyone all of us knows. You can either see that as the world’s bleakest assessment. Or in some way, maybe it can be liberating. In other words, that death is as much a part of life as worrying about college tuition or wondering how many seasons of Rizzoli and Isles I’ve never seen. If you know an end is inevitable and sorry folks it is, why not love your spouse and dote on your kids? Why not tell funny jokes and share good music? Why not be a mensch at home and at work? Why not be a good friend that people love when you’re here and miss dearly when you’re gone? The only real legacy most us will ever leave is the stories our friends tell about us. We might as well leave them some good material.