A Eulogy for an Epitaph

January 24, 2011

On the first day of my second semester of college, my history professor gave us a syllabus hallmarked with the epitaph of the artist Raphael, penned by a bold Cardinal Bembo: When Raphael lived, Nature feared to be outdone. When Raphael died, Nature feared to die with him.

“Why is this quote significant?” he queried the class of 30 bleary-eyed college students currently regretting taking a 9:15 a.m. history class.

I cleared my throat. I knew the answer. Hell, I knew everything. The summer before, I’d read the copy of Atlas Shrugged my grandfather gave me, cover-to-cover. I was a certified intellectual.

“I think it means something about competition,” I said. “I think it’s a statement about how competition drives us forward, how you can only be your best if you’re pushed to your limits. And when you’re no longer pushed to the brink, you wither.”

“Nice try,” he said with a smile, scratching his tawny beard. “But that’s not the answer.”

I spent the rest of the semester — and semesters beyond — attempting to discern the epitaph’s meaning, but to no avail. I mean, what else could the epitaph have meant? Nature was trying to outrun Raphael when he lived. When he died, the chase was up, and Nature had no need to improve herself.

Ten years later and wiser, I think I’ve finally figured out the answer.

June 11, 2020: Part 1

About 11 months ago, I gently folded soft vinyl paper into thirds and slipped it into an envelope. After licking its seal, I turned it over and wrote in dextrous cursive: To be opened on June 11, 2020. I placed the envelope atop souvenirs I’d acquired in Washington, D.C., New York, Minneapolis, resting calm in a box, all circumscribed by bubble wrap and sloppily torn pieces of tape. I folded the halves of the brown lid and sealed it off with packing tape. I robotically wrote “SEA” in giant letters on its side, like a baggage handler, because baggage handlers aren’t overwhelmed with emotions when they send boxes into the unknown.

The box was sent to a recycling plant somewhere in Tacoma. The souvenirs have been released from their bubble-wrap bondage, once again adorning the walls of an apartment. But the envelope has remained sealed, dormant in a kitchen drawer. Until today, that is.

Dear 2020 Jonathan,

It’s me (you?) back from 2019. I’m writing this from Unit 6012, you know, your old apartment. I know that today carries a lot of meaning for you.

I feel like my life is a puzzle that I’ve carefully assembled, and now I’m throwing all the pieces back into the box. As I look around my apartment, I guess I mean that both literally and figuratively.

Still, if you could look back at me now, I bet you’d say, Yeah, you did the right thing. I bet you have a lot of nice friends up there in the Pacific Northwest. I bet you even have a boyfriend. Hopefully you’re over F––––––. I’m still working on that, and it’s really hard.

Oh, did you ever meet that guy whose blog you happened upon? It’d be wild if you did.

2019 Jonathan

May 30, 2020

“Hey — everything okay in your neck of the woods? Looks like the protests in downtown Seattle are getting intense.”
“Yeah. I’m safe in my apartment, but we can see the smoke from here.”
“Wow! I’m glad you’re safe.”
“It looks pretty rough downtown right now.”
“I’m watching the videos.”
“If there’s anything you need, don’t hesitate to reach out.”

Blogger Boy is all right.

I call Charles next.

June 11, 2010

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Honolulu!” I sit up, startled.

“Just kidding,” the jaunty flight attendant says, clearing his throat. “Welcome to Seattle!”

I try to look over my dad’s shoulder to determine if the passenger three rows behind me who looks like Lucas Grabeel is actually Lucas Grabeel. By the time we disembark and step into the terminal, Lucas or lookalike Lucas has vanished, so I will never know.

I follow Dad, who seems to know the way to baggage claim. The Seattle-Tacoma International Airport — or, as the locals call it, Sea-Tac — is unwieldy, unsure whether its labyrinth of gates and concourses should espouse postmodernism or 1970s vintage. I chuckle at its eclecticism as I ascend and descend escalators to reunite with my suitcases.

“Hey!” I turn around to the tune of a husky, chipper voice. It’s Maria. She’s driven up from Portland to meet us. She scoops us into a hug and walks us out the automatic doors, into Pacific Northwest air so cool and crisp it’s imperceptible until she’s mentioned it.

“Doesn’t this feel amazing?” she exclaims, walking us to her red oversized pick-up truck. She throws the luggage into the cargo area as we pile into the backseat. The next thing I know, the ignition is on, and she accelerates the car down the Fibonacci spiral ramp of the parking garage like she’s running out of time.

“I hope you like Cheesecake Factory, because that’s where we’re going! I got a gift card!”

As we cycle through three baskets of wheat bread and honey butter, the eye of Sauron — a hallmark of the chain’s gauche interiors — stares down judgmentally. We exchange stories of our past and plans for our future over pasta and sandwiches that finally arrive. Stephen wants to be a chemical engineer. Me? I have no idea.

The check arrives, and we return to the truck. Maria turns right onto Strander Boulevard, then onto Southcenter Parkway, then onto the freeway. We’re going to explore the city. I thank God we’re traveling northbound, as the cars traveling out of the city — well, aren’t.

“Is the traffic always this bad?” Mom asks Maria.

“Yep.”

I pay no attention as she traces the floating bridges and spaghetti interchanges of Seattle, fearlessly charging through the city, at least not until my mother takes my phone and demands I look at the unremarkable Space Needle and evergreens.

“Hey, Jonathan,” Maria pipes up. “Have you thought about a career in research? I think you’d be good at it.”

“Meh,” I shrug off her advice. I don’t want to think about my future now. Truth be told, I’d rather be texting a boy who will inevitably break my heart. The moment before the heartbreak is worth the price, or so I keep telling myself.

“Well, think about it,” she tells me. “And move to the Pacific Northwest. You’d love it.”

June 11, 2019

Twenty-four hours ago, I was Mr. Jonathan Adams. Now, I am Dr. Jonathan Adams.

I’d successfully defended my dissertation on motives for school weapon carrying. I’d dedicated it to the tough-as-nails woman who told me on the streets of Seattle I’d make a good researcher. I wish she’d been here to see it and that I’d put my phone down all those years ago, that I hadn’t thrown away that orbit around the city on I-405.

As I pensively detail the list of revisions I need to make to my dissertation, my mind drifts to thoughts about the attractive boy I met two days ago at Pridefest. I locate him on Facebook, but my finger can’t quite reach the message button and send him my thoughts. Besides, it’s best if he forgets me. I’m not sure where I’ll be in three months, but it won’t be Birmingham.

I minimize Safari and return to Microsoft Word. I change “context” to “location” on page 62 when the phone rings. My heart races as the voice on the other end tells me something about a salary and benefits and the classes I’ll be teaching next year.

“When do I have to let you know?” I ask. “Seattle is — quite the move.”

“Well, today is June 11, so — if you could let me know by the fourteenth, that would be best,” she tells me.

“I will. And thank you, again.”

I’d like to think Maria would have smiled, thinking about the advice she’d given me exactly nine years ago, crossing her fingers I’d say yes.

Three days later, I did.

August 15, 2019

“Take Exit 10A to merge onto I-405 South,” the tinny female voice demands.

I ignore Siri. A trip that spanned an entire continent can be extended by a few short minutes. If I’m going to forget about the boys who broke my heart as I pledge allegiance to the Space Needle, I have to take Interstate 5. I tell Siri to play “Hello, Seattle” by Owl City — an obvious choice — as I behold the skyline of my new home. As I trace the floating bridges and spaghetti interchanges of Seattle freeways just like Maria had done all those years ago, I ask God, the Space Needle, or Whomever It May Concern, to watch over me, to strengthen me, to give me friends, to show me direction. Oh, and a boyfriend would be nice too.

I take Exit 154B onto Southcenter Parkway, turn onto Strander Boulevard, and pass the Cheesecake Factory on my way to the hotel.

June 3, 2020

I read the letter I wrote one year ago for the third time. I set it down. Physically, it is on the coffee table.

“Hey, Siri, play ‘The Descent’ by Bastille,” I command my smart speaker.

What do you know about all the filth that’s going on here, Ralph?
Kids who get high repeatedly don’t want to come down
I breathe in hard
Don’t speak, ’cause it’s like a bitter pill

Four days ago, the streets of downtown Seattle were set ablaze. The protestors’ chant — no justice, no peace — made itself not a threat but a promise.

I know June 11 is coming, and I know I need to start working on a commemorative piece. I’d penned the essay I thought I’d post in eight days long ago in my head back in October. Its thesis was something like this: “Seattle is the place where I learned to believe in miracles.” I revised the introit a few weeks later: “As I gaze at the evergreens illumined by the desaturated December sky, I realized Birmingham is my hometown, and Seattle is the place I grew up.” And once again, February ushered in another revision: “Statements that begin with ‘you can’ and ‘you must’ have only as much power as you give them.”

I think of those statements now, those ambitions, those visions. I classify them as forlorn relics, in the same category as wedding invitations, plane tickets, and black and gold gift bags for the Class of 2020 — items optimistically manufactured for a future that would never materialize.

You blow my mind
You make my heart beat
Faster, faster, faster, faster, fast…

Three days ago, the protestors marched southward, into Tukwila, Renton, looting the supermarkets as I texted Sarah and Nekai at 10:30 p.m., “Are you safe?”

They’re White. Of course they are. They can be. I can be. That’s what privilege is.

The echoes of bad news ring loud
It breaks my heart into a million pieces…

Two days ago, Donald Trump held a Bible in his right hand in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C., dispelling the onlookers with tear gas. I put my phone down, mute the television, and crack open Ibram X. Kendo’s How to Be An Antiracist.

If it’s going to break me, won’t you let me go
Leave it ’til the morning, I don’t want to know

Yesterday, I woke up and opened the scrolling horror show of my phone. It’s a scene from Capitol Hill. Umbrellas buffered the civilians from police who were assisted by SWAT teams who were assisted by the National Guard. They were standing outside the coffee shop where, just a few months ago, Micah and I bought 16-ounce cups of Ethiopian Yirgacheffe before walking over to the bookstore.

As I see the stages of my placid memories destroyed, I realize this is the only way. Only obliteration can teach us that Black lives matter. The obliteration of a glass window is pretty compared to the obliteration of Black Americans at the hands of police officers. I want the noise to stop — the riots, the sound of guns — but I don’t deserve it.

Help me piece it all together, darling.

June 11, 2020: Part 2

At the conclusion of that history class, the professor assigned perhaps the bleakest book ever written. The perfect antidote to Atlas Shrugged, The Drowned and the Saved is the memoir of Holocaust survivor Primo Levi. The desperation that dripped from his words and inability to grasp the complacence of bystanders seeped from the pages. But what struck me most were the final lines of the book’s second chapter:

We too are so dazzled by power and prestige as to forget our essential fragility. Willingly or not we come to terms with power, forgetting that we are all in the ghetto, that the ghetto is walled in, that outside the ghetto reign the lords of death, and close by the train is waiting.

I entered this decade with the highest, unobstructed hopes, balancing a glittery cone on my head as I danced to “Roaring 20’s” with Kelsey and Hallie back at David and John’s place. I suppose we all did. We printed wedding invitations and gift bags to congratulate the Class of 2020 — objects that are now ghosts of miscarried optimism.

On that cool August night when I first drove into Seattle, I did not bother to ask God, the Space Needle, or Whomever It May Concern to keep the floating bridges from sinking and the pillars of the spaghetti interchanges from buckling. Those mighty bulwarks stood unnoticed, unthanked, unrewarded as they upheld the hearts and souls of those who’d called this place home for six minutes or 60 years. Yet if they had shrugged their shoulders, what would have killed me first: the drowning or the hypothermia, the bent steel of my car or a shard of concrete?

All those years ago, when my history professor asked me to describe the significance of Raphael’s epitaph, the answer wasn’t some riddle hidden within the words. Rather, their significance was in Cardinal Bembo’s animalistic audacity. How dare someone say a man can make Nature fear to be outdone or make Nature afraid to die with him?

Cardinal Bembo forgot his own essential fragility. That night as I sailed into Seattle to make it my new home, basking in reveries about power and prestige, popularity and romance, I’d forgotten my own essential fragility too. But the diagnosis of a Snohomish County man with a mysterious new disease called COVID-19 was all it took to remind me — and the rest of us — that the train is waiting.

I’m fairly certain that this isn’t the life Maria envisioned for me, but — as it turns out — it’s the one she prepared me for.

Ten years ago, Maria accelerated down the Fibonacci spiral parking garage ramp like she was running out of time because she was. The cancer was in remission, but she knew the train was coming. She remembered her essential fragility. Perhaps she greeted us with her husky, chipper voice because she wanted the rest of her life to be full of joy. Perhaps she fearlessly charged through cities because she wanted to pack in as much adventure as she could before it was too late. And perhaps she told me to move to the Pacific Northwest because she found the mountains and evergreens beautiful, and thought life ought be filled with beautiful things.

Maria passed away eight years ago. I was never one to cry at funerals, but I erupted into tears when I saw the Nikon D3000 she used to take the picture of me standing by Elliott Bay.

“Maria lived half as long as most of us will,” one of her friends told me in that moment. “But she lived twice as much.”

I suppose the best way to honor Maria and my own essential fragility on June 11, 2020 is to live twice as much, to make my numbered days as meaningful as possible. By the time you’re reading this, I’ll be on my way to that Cheesecake Factory. I’ll trace my fingertips over the stucco columns to see if they can remember the laughter and jokes we all shared 10 years ago better than I. I’ll order Evelyn’s Pasta — Maria’s favorite — and a slice of red velvet cheesecake — my favorite. Then, I’ll drive across the way to Target and buy a poster and Sharpies so I can overthink what I’ll inscribe before I march in a protest for racial justice this Saturday. Desperation drips from the words of Black Americans, and they are unable to grasp the complacency of bystanders.

And, finally, I’ll charge fearlessly through the city, pay more attention to the evergreens and Space Needle this time, and give thanks for the miracles of life and floating bridges and pillars that uphold spaghetti interchanges.