September’s 10

When my grandfather died, my mother called and left a voicemail, “Your grandfather is on the roof, and he won’t come down.”

It was the punchline to a joke that I had once told her.

Here’s a version of that joke… the dance remix.

There’s this guy.

He’s just a normal, regular, guy.

He works hard at his job, he goes home, he feeds his cat, he eats, they watch TV, they go to sleep. He wakes up, he feeds the cat, he goes to work. But one day, on the way to work, he gets a call from his terminally ill mother. His father has died.

Just as he receives this news, the man in front of him keels over and falls dead. Instantly. This man, in an orange snowboarding jacket goes from standing, looking out a bus window listening to the Violent Femmes to dead in a matter of half a word.

So the guy, whose main concern in life was keeping the cat from going on the roof at night, becomes The Guy, his mother’s caretaker, and overwhelmed executor of an estate.

The Guy, finds himself leveling up. He has a new working knowledge of how to transport a body out of a foreign country. He gets his buddies together and remodels the apartment above the garage. His ill but spry mother settles into the apartment and he feels a sense of pride.

The Guy has a brother who lives across the country who occasionally chimes in with unhelpful information about artichokes curing cancer or insights about how their dad’s interest in Slovenian wildflowers is what killed him.

This only irritates the The Guy a lot. He lets a gripe about his brother’s missives slip to a coworker who empathically sighs, “Everything is easier from 1,000 miles away.”

This, and the barista’s T-shirt – a cat made of wildflowers – inspires The Guy to start saving his money for a vacation.

After a few months, The Guy flys his brother out to take care of his cat and their mother.

Before he goes outside to wait for his shuttle, The Guy writes a reminder on the whiteboard in the kitchen.

Close the windows to the roof at 5 PM.

Give mother her medicine at 6 PM.

The Guy flies to Slovenia to see the wildflowers that thrilled his father. Perhaps he feels ready to try new things with new people. He relaxes into himself.

The next day, he calls his brother to check in.

“The cat is dead,” his brother says.

The Guy is shocked. And angry. The guy tells his brother off.

“Wait, why are you mad?” His brother asks.

“Because this is the first full day of my first vacation in over a decade?”

“So, what did you want me to say? Your cat was fine?”
“No. You should have said, the cat is on the roof and it won’t come down. Ease me into the fact. I’d tell you to put food and water out for her. Then, when I call again, you’d say, that you put out food and water but she won’t come in.

When I call on the last night of my vacation, you can say Isobel wouldn’t eat or drink and she wouldn't come in and then she died.

“We don’t know the cat is dead. I just heard a shriek and then she was gone.”

“Dude!”

“I’m sorry. Lesson learned, man. I’m sorry, you’ve been so solid about dad and mom. I’ll do better next time.”

“Okay. Forgiven. So how is mom?”

…

But outside of a joke, how does a person tell a person who really doesn’t deserve such news, that her father is dying?