Chapter 1 — Yearning to Fly

Do you ever think about killing yourself? she asked.

Every time I cut carbs. That’s what I’d usually say. A deflective quip. A real zinger. But I bit my lip. I was tired of cracking jokes. Particularly about my life. Besides, psychiatrists like her clocked in at $350 an hour. And I was running out of time.

So I opened up. And told her how just that morning, on a five mile run, I gave killing myself some thought. On my route, there’s a skyway that crosses over a freeway. I’ve run over it a hundred times. Always early in the morning, seeking a runner’s buzz, hoping the next hit is stronger than the last, a starry beam to help transport me through another humdrum day, and, ideally, shoot a hole through the indicative red swells rolling over my face that’s otherwise just pale, and, lately, increasingly void of hope.

But today, in the middle of the skyway, I slowed my grinder’s pace down to an aimless stroll, suddenly noticing sights and sounds I’d never seen or heard. Even at this early hour, thousands of cars whizzed and zoomed beneath my feet, racing, I figured, to nowhere of consequence.

I came to a full stop. My heart was working hard and beating faster than normal. I could hear it and locked into the gradual slowing down of its tempo until it was measured and hypnotic, but not at all calming.

Its beat was bewitchingly evocative and lurid, something warlike and far away, but approaching, rumbling towards me, steadily, an unseen menace chewing up the earth, leaving everything behind it charred black and firing off booming shots indicative of closure, like the opening prelude of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. Or was it the theme song to M*A*S*H?

Then silence.

The morning sky was streaking, all syrupy and warm, like God himself was dry-brushing from a bucket of atomic orange paint. I forgot how to breathe. And suddenly, I wanted to jump. A graceful swan dive right off the skyway before splattering on the pavement like a pot of Borscht soup.

This abrupt urge softened, morphing into a rolling want that felt whole and earnest. I was warm and safe. Yet at the same time, I found it impossible to move, as if I were submerged in a volcanic ash mud bath somewhere off the grid in Central California.

In a flash, I was zapped over to an alternate reality. Now weightless and free. And in full command of an infinite strength I could use to move mountains. If only the roving pack of doubts that never stopped hunting me lost my scent or were beautifully slaughtered.

I imagined the flight down. Hovering first, then accelerating. Maybe I’d attempt a twisting flip, like a circus diver, my parting gift to listless commuters beneath me searching for a reason to blink.

Would I die right away? Or sit there for a moment, fully coherent and able to watch the pickup with a brush country grill guard zero in and wipe me out for good.

Maybe the good ol’ boy driving the truck would swerve and flip, end-over-end, causing one of those forty car pile ups I used to see when I was a kid living in California watching CHiPs. As great as those were to watch, I didn’t want to hurt anybody.

What if I dodged a direct hit and lived? How would I feel about losing the ability to shower without the help of an ancient nurse that’s seen it all, smelled it all and washed it all and never stopped talking about it?

And what would I say to my family? What would I say to the police? What would I say to anyone?

Now I’ve seen big banana peels, but this one must’ve been tossed there by King Kong!

And if I did die, how would people find out? How long would it take? I was on a run and didn’t have an ID. Only my phone, which I used to play motivational tunes on my morning runs. (Maybe I needed a new playlist?)

How long would it take to identify my corpse? Especially since I’d look like the kitchen floor of a butter fingered Russian chef.

My family would be shocked. Selfishly and horribly, I’d want my death to be a little upsetting. Maybe a few ticks worse than finding their pet goldfish locked in King Pigeon Pose on the floor below its bowl.

But what dark, hellish path would this send their life racing down? Or, without me in the picture, would their lives get better? Even exponentially better?

I thought about my wife’s timeline to move on and remarry? Five years? Two? A few days after the wake?

Would the fella she’d marry (a cuddlesome and successful small business owner with a questionable 16 handicap in golf, also widowed, two kids, one in high school, another at Brown, much, much wealthier and more dependable than a Kohler toilet’s flush — but not exactly an early 90’s Kevin Coster) love her as much as I did? Not a chance.

And my kids? Would they like this harmless dope? Selfishly and horribly, I hoped not. At least at first. But I’d want them to warm up to his Griswaldy charm. And they would. My kids are wise and mature and well beyond their years. They’re spiritual enough to trust the process, knowing He does things with purpose and reason. So it’s best to stay in the flow and let it take you where it’s taking you.

I had some life insurance. But I suspected it didn’t cover swan dives off overpasses during rush hour. What about all the bills? I handled those and paid them online. I never had a reason to share my clunky process or the passwords, which were scribbled on a 5x7 card and taped to the inside of a three-ring ledger where we kept our checks. Random numbers (favorite running backs) and words (stupid nicknames), all written down at different times with different pens with no discernable connection. Without Robert Langdon from The Davinci Code there to crack the riddle, they’d lose electricity and water and get alarming pink letters from the bank about our mortgage.

I imagined the eerie scene at my funeral. It would be well attended. (I think.) A few hundred people. Some disappointing no shows. (Traveling on business or away to a kid’s soccer tournament in Overland Park, Kansas.) And probably a surprise guest or two. (A professor who “saw a lot of promise” and the by-the-book HR rep from work representing everyone who’d rather play grab ass back at the office.)

Before the service, people would whisper mostly nice things. (I think.)

Remember that time when. . .oh yeah. . .ha ha ha. . .

I should’ve written a letter to my wife and kids. Or made a confessional video like Michael Keaton did in Life — his shameless attempt to hook an Oscar that only caught a lot of scorn. In my own shameless attempt to grab hearts, I’d ramble on, spewing out a collection of clichéd wisdom (be nice to waiters, never talk during movies, uh, don’t jog over skyways).

A minister I hardly knew (and dodged when I saw in public) would speak, going through the motions, phoning it in, reading off the same “better place” script he’d read at a funeral last Thursday. (A cyclist hit by a bus.)

Then someone close would come up and say a few words. Hopefully my father-in-law. He has this great booming voice and a way of connecting with people in a way that makes Oprah Winfrey seem like a prison nurse.

Plus, in a snap (and rather ingeniously), he’d pivot my gruesome suicide (casket closed) into a story about the time he played polo with a third cousin of a Saudi Prince, lightening the room’s mood. A welcome change.

The lights would dim. And a hastily arranged photo montage would project onto a makeshift screen, showcasing stock photos snapped up during my ordinary life. On the mound in Little League. “Wacky” poses with friends in high school and fraternity brothers in college. The big wedding day (400 guests!) when I married my dream girl. Then a sequence of me in the delivery room holding each of my newborn kids. Each picture wholly unable to capture the impossible bliss radiating inside of me like a nuclear blast.

Oh, and my hole-in-one, where I’m standing there, holding the flag with an idiotic smile on my face, like I’d just been told I aced an exam I didn’t crack a book for. And, of course, a few ho-hum pictures of me doing something “interesting” or “adventurous.” Like standing next to a hot dog cart in New York. Or skiing down the tame part of a mountain, the only run I could project a sliver of skill.

And, since I lived in South Texas, a picture where I’m holding the antlers of a dead deer with bloody hands (looking thoroughly spooked) that I straight-up murdered with a high powered rifle from a cozy blind with office chairs less than a hundred yards from an automated protein feeder.

I’d want the song backing up the clip show to be Warren Zevon’s, Poor, Poor Pitiful Me. An ideal blend of punchy irony paired with a subtle and sardonic style. Plus a snappy good time chorus people could sing along with and tap their feet to.

What about my other favorite troubadour, Tupac Shakur? How about a little, Heavy in the Game? Hmm. Pac isn’t exactly bleach white Presbyterian church material. Besides, if I was at the funeral of a 44-year year old white guy (who did a belly flop onto a freeway) and Heavy in the Game backed his montage, the way I’d laugh would make Max Cady from Cape Fear feel a little uneasy.

Back on the skyway, I watched the cars race below me. I found my breath and started to run, leaving all the suicidal thoughts behind me. Again.

Yeah, I guess think about it. But not seriously, I said.

My psychiatrist was silent. Then she scribbled in her journal. Long enough to jot down enough red flags to call a white van. Or maybe she was just tweaking a list of things to do before visiting her son in Seattle.

Whatever the case, when she finished writing, she put the pen down and closed her journal. Then worked herself through a deep and measured breath before raising her head and looking straight into my eyes with an unsettling level of focus and a curiosity that wasn’t sweet and childlike, but more perplexed and challenged, like she just stumbled across a glitch in nature’s matrix. It was like she was an owl perched on the limb of a sturdy oak and trying to make sense of why a common field mouse below her was solving trig equations on a blackboard.

Well, Jason, you can’t drink anymore.

Three days later, I was loading up my Suburban for a family road trip up to Colorado for a week of skiing. An annual trek that brought me immense joy.

Well, Jason, you can’t drink anymore.

But in the days leading up to it, all I did was play and rewind those words, over and over in my head, each time listening closely for a loophole of sorts (something, anything), like just enough doubt in her voice I could then leverage to undercut her verdict and get a new trial.

Well, Jason, you can’t drink anymore.

Admittedly, the sound of these words when she said them triggered an unexpected tingle of joyful disbelief, like what a castaway might feel hearing a rescue boat blowing its horn.

Still, overall, I was highly offended. Even furious. The nerve.

But it didn’t matter how I felt. Relieved, furious or as confused as my mom gets ordering coffee at Starbucks. Because in the end, her words forced me to think about some hard truths. Would I stop drinking? Could I stop drinking? And what if the skyway I ran over most mornings wasn’t wrapped over by a chain link fence?

I started the Suburban and pulled out of the carport. And I knew for the next seventeen hours I’d think of nothing else, as I made my way up to Telluride.