Volume 4, Issue 88: Ten Dead

"Most of me is out of sight."

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Last week, I had my annual physical. I know you’re supposed to get more obsessed with your health as you get older, but that hasn’t happened to me yet. I’ve got the usual signs of aging—the waking up in the middle of the night to pee, the unconscious making of weird groaning sounds when I get out of a chair, the knowing of, like, four bands at Lollapalooza—but, fortunately, nothing beyond that. Each year I go to my doctor, and if he tells me he doesn’t need to see me again until this time next year, I feel like I’ve won. That’s all I need. If my doctor looks at me and feels reasonably confident that I’m not going to die if he don’t see me for another year, that’ll work. I’ll get nervous when he looks at my charts, goes pale and says, “Uh … do not leave this room.”

My health was good this year, better than last year, even, thanks largely to an increased exercise regimen and some adjustments in my eating habits. I’ve lost some weight, my blood pressure is down and even my cholesterol numbers, the only thing the doctor was worried about last time, dropped considerably. They dropped so much, in fact, that the doctor decided he wanted to run some scans just to make sure the cholesterol test wasn’t defective. So on Tuesday morning, I got a calcium scan. A coronary calcium scan looks for calcium deposits in your heart arteries as a way to alert you of the potential possibility of future cardiac arrests or strokes. Considering my family’s history of heart disease, not to mention my stubborn resistance to vegetables as a concept, he thought the scan would be worthwhile. You can tell the test is a good one, because most insurance plans don’t pay for it.

Anyway, Tuesday morning, they put some little suction cup things on my chest, put me in one of those machines and told me to take several deep breaths. The lasers—I’m pretty sure they were lasers—ran up and down my torso for about five minutes, and then I put my shirt back on. I thanked the technician and was about to walk out to my car when she asked me a question.

“Did you used to smoke?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Cigarettes,” she said. “Did you used to smoke cigarettes?”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, I used to. Many years ago. I quit when my wife got pregnant with our son, and he’s about to turn 12. So 13 years ago, I guess.”

“And how long did you smoke?” she asked.

“About 13 years?” I said. “I started my junior year of college, and I was 36 when my son was born, so I guess about 13, 14 years.”

“OK,” she said.

Those were the only two questions she asked me. I did not ask her why she was asking. I do not know why I did not ask her why she asking. I simply did not ask. I don’t know if she was looking at the screen while I was being scanned, or if there even was a screen. I do not know if that’s a question she asks everyone. I don’t know much of anything. I just know she asked it.

It has been a few days since my scan, and no one has called me to tell me I’m dying of lung cancer. The report actually came back clean: “The imaged lungs are clear of consolidation and suspicious nodule. No pericardial effusion. No adenopathy. No central endobronchial lesion.” I’ll take it: I passed. No more doctors for another year. But that has not stopped me from thinking about her question every day since she asked it.

*******************

I have never been particularly scared of death, at least not, I think, any more than any other person. I’d rather not die—dying seems bad. But it’s also not something that has ever much occupied my mind and, perhaps more to the point, not something that has ever kept me from doing things in my life that I might deem particularly risky or foolhardy. As we talked about a few weeks ago, I believe it’s important not to let your life be guided or driven by fear; to live your life terrified by threats real and imagined is no way to live at all. I’ve always been much more scared of death for my loved ones than I am scared of death for myself. The idea of mourning them is so much worse than them mourning me. Daniel talks about this in How Lucky.

But this, like everything else in the world, changes when your kids get older.

Before I had kids, if something were to happen to me, it’d be sad for those who cared about me, I suppose, and I might get a short writeup in the local paper (“Former Blog Person Stains Carpet”), and your Saturday mornings would be a little more productive than they are right now, but all told, it wouldn’t have been that tragic. You’d be sad for a second, it might remind you how you’re getting old yourself, you might go back and read some of my old writing, but then that would pretty much end it: Everyone, my friends and family included, would go back to their lives. Hopefully when they thought of me, they’d think of me fondly, but they could move on relatively unimpeded. Everyone would be all right.

But the thing you learn about your kids is that they need you. If anything, they need you more as they get older than they did when they were younger. If I would have died when my kids were, like, five and three, they would be too young to really process what had happened, and ultimately their memories of me would be fleeting, if they even had them at all. When they were adults, and someone asked them about their dad, they’d say, “oh, he died when I was really young,” and when the person they were talking to said they were sorry, my kids could shrug. “Oh, it’s fine,” they’d say. “I was so little when he died. I didn’t really know him.” And it would be fine! They’d probably end up with a new, handsomer dad anyway. My only real legacy to them would be high math scores on the SAT and a lack of body hair.

They know me, now, though. If a piano landed on my head tomorrow, they’d feel it—forever. It would change them, even imprison them; having their dad die when they were 12, or 9, would follow them around the rest of their lives. The next few years of their lives—arguably the most formative years, right when they’re learning who they are and what they care about—would be spent dealing with my death and what it meant for the world they were about to enter. It would force them to grow up way, way too fast. They don’t need to spend the next few years mourning me. They need to spend them being alternately annoyed and embarrassed by me. They need to be kids. They need me around.

I am not dying, I do not have lung cancer and I do not believe a piano is about to fall on my head. But I have reached the point in my life—because my children have reached that point in their life—that my existence has real stakes. I’ve actually never been more important than I am right now. If I vanished from the earth 25 years ago, it would have be sad, but fine. If I vanish from the earth 25 years from now, it will be slightly less sad, but still fine. But now? Now I have to be here. My sons are entering the most important years of their lives. I need to be here for it.

Which is why I keep obsessing over that technician’s question. She wasn’t asking me if I smoked now. If I smoked now, well, I would have no excuse. I’d be putting my life in serious jeopardy, placing my nicotine addiction (and it was very much an addiction) above being around for my children. She was asking me if I once smoked. If I’d done something in the past that I’d suffer the ramifications of now. In 2010, the last year I smoked, I didn’t know what I was imperiling. I didn’t know the decisions I made then would someday put my children in danger of not having a father when they needed to have a father around the most. I mean, I guess I knew that theoretically, intellectually, but of course I couldn’t feel that urgency. I acted like that because I didn’t even know these kids yet. But now I do. And now I want to take that guy who smoked for 13 or 14 years and shake him until all the change falls out of his pockets.

When you are younger, you know that when you age, what you value in your life is going to change. What you don’t know, what you can’t know, is that how much you value your life is going to change as well. The idea of not being there for my children breaks my heart in a way I couldn’t possibly have understood back when I smoked. Had I known what it would do to these kids to not have me around, I would have thrown every cigarette I had down the deepest of wells.

You know: Like everybody in my life was telling me to back then.

I am not worried about my health. It has been 13 years since I smoked; the American Cancer Society estimates that 10 years after you quit smoking, your risk of lung cancer is half of that of a smoker, and that 15 years afterward, you have the same risk of coronary heart disease as a non-smoker. This is not about being fearful. It’s about the irresponsibility of youth, of the foolish notion that when you are being reckless, you are only hurting yourself. My children were born when I was 10 years older than my father was, when I was born. How long do I have with them? How long do they have with me? What I’ve learned since my sons were born is that I want to maximize every moment I have with them. I wish I had realized they were coming. I thought I was real smart back then. I knew nothing. I understand that now. I understand that more every year.

Also, I sorta hope next time the technician just leaves their questions for the doctor, thanks.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Review: “Home Team,” The Wall Street Journal. I reviewed Dave Kindred’s new book for the WSJ.

2. It Has Been a Good Baseball Year, New York. Is this the least complain-y baseball season in recent memory?

3. The Fifty Best Players of the Postseason, MLB.com. This is why people were yelling at me on Instagram all week.

4. Your Favorite Jump-on-the-Bandwagon Playoff Teams, MLB.com. I’m Team Orioles, I think.

5. I Did the Last Power Rankings of the Regular Season, MLB.com. Remember: I just vote and write these up. These are not my specific rankings! (Also to the Instagram yellers.)

6. Your Saturday Playoff Preview, MLB.com. I’ll be doing these every day of the playoffs.

7. Your Early Division Series Storylines, MLB.com. Like this!

8. Your Wednesday Playoff Preview, MLB.com. Or this!

9. Your Tuesday Playoff Preview, MLB.com. Or this!

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed “Dumb Money,” “The Creator” and the four (fantastic) Wes Anderson/Roald Dahl shorts on Netflix, including my favorite one, “The Swan,” which is only 17 minutes and which you should watch right now.

Seeing Red, Bernie and I did our final show of the year.

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, we recapped Auburn and previewed Kentucky.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“I Never Called Her Momma,” Jenisha Watts, The Atlantic. A few days late on this—though it is the cover story of the new issue—but this is a breathtaking piece.

Also, David Remnick has an urgent piece in The New Yorker about how we really need to be paying attention to what’s happening with Donald Trump right now, whether we want to or not. (And boy do I not want to.)

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Sure Shot,” Beastie Boys. While driving through Nebraska last weekend, William and I decided to try out some Beastie Boys. That shit’s still pretty great! I was surprised by just how I essentially knew every syllable on “Ill Communication.” All songs should kick off with the dog barking at the beginning here.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

Also, now there is an Official The Time Has Come Spotify Playlist.

Illinois football, it’s truly terrible again. At least my son can lead a horse to water. (I was unable to verify if he were able to make it drink.)

Have a great weekend, all. Oh, and the World Series pick is Astros over Dodgers, sorry.

Best,
Will