NOTE: This post goes deep into grief and dead parent stuff.
Peter is one of those people who seem to spend their waking hours on Facebook.1 His posts follow a pattern of letting us know about his wins. In particular, he’ll write long posts about everything he’s accomplished over the last few weeks or months and how he’ll meet his goal of writing the first draft of two new books over the holidays or appearing on 1000 podcasts or rebuilding Noah’s f*cking ark. I dunno, man, I tune out after the first listicle.
Peter is a creative peer of mine. We’ve barely interacted and he has no idea how much his posts provoke me.
We all have a thermometer of annoyance prompted by social media posturing. Perhaps, one of these conditions is the one that gets your mercury rising:
But, there’s a difference between this cabrón and other cabrones who flood our social media feeds with bullhorns of self-satisfaction. Peter pushes my thermometer to the top of its emotional expansion chamber.
In those moments, if my internal self was externalized, it would look like a rabid dog. The anger that goes towards this man is massive and unwarranted. He has no idea. Nor do I think he’s worthy of that ire.
The thermometer that Peter taps into is one all of us have (in different forms). A thermometer of unrelated wreckage. A bouillabaisse of grief that shows up in various arguments or reactions, when in my best moments, I can pause, recognize the source and verbally say to myself, or the person I’m arguing with:
“I’m sorry — this has nothing to do with you. This is about dad again.”
It’s the “dead dad thermometer”. Or grief. We can also just call it grief.
Over the course of making Other Men Need Help, I’ve had a number of men ask me to do episodes about grief. In particular, episodes about the loss of a father. My internal response is that the whole show is quietly about grief. At some point, there’s a refrain that I announce in the development process of creative projects, where I feel the need to acknowledge, “Oh, this one’s about dad again.” I’ve considered getting a button to push every time it happens
Most artists can be self-conscious about their source material — namely riffing off the same themes or source code. One thing I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older, if we’re lucky, we’re made up of two to three personal traumas and we spend the rest of our lives administering to those wounds. That’s for everyone — artist or not. The genesis of internal pain is often some version of grief.
The goal in life is not just attending to but acknowledging when grief is the source of our pain. Like when you have oversized reactions to reading that Peter is adapting one of his books into a screenplay while learning to juggle aardvarks or some shit (ok, I just stopped reading what he was actually try to accomplish at some point).
This year, I’ve had loads of conversations about personal and projected ambition — the anger that comes up towards others and self, the constant negotiation of my own definitions. And, woo boy, I find myself, again and again, circling around memories of May 2nd, 1993.
My dad died 31 years ago today.
He was being treated for pneumonia in Suburban Hospital near the crossroads of Washington, DC and Bethesda, Maryland for two weeks. As an asthmatic, he was prescribed a steroid to assist with breathing. The steroid was ill-prescribed and resulted in internal bleeding. His death was swift, caused by hemorrhaging.
Upon arrival at the hospital, we were told to say goodbye to a vacated body; one that showed a physical form in stasis of trauma — tubes in and out of him and, in my memory, a face that was frozen mid-scream. We collected his belongings which included a nice watch, gold crucifix, rings, and various emblems of status (my father liked to dress and style well). I was tasked with carrying the tray containing all these artifacts out of the hospital.
We had to make our way through the ER lobby to get to the car. It was a long walk filled with a busy Sunday night population of infirmed visitors. These tired, vulnerable folks seemed to pause and part ways to give us space, some bowing their heads, all remaining silent, allowing this hospital wing to be a house of grace as they saw a child with a recently departed loved one’s belongings. The attention was kinda nice — I’d never commanded such a biblical exit. But as an adult, of everything that happened that night, I want to live my life with that image — the decency of people.
When we came home, I went into the office, staring at the medals given to my father over years of military and business service. While I listened to my mom make call after call to loved ones about dad’s passing, I looked at all this shiny valor and asked, “Was it worth it, dad?”
My father died from malpractice. But he really died from work. He died from a masculine ideal. He died from an immigrant’s mindset. He worked himself into sickness. Unfortunately, I’ve seen this pattern repeated with men but I’ve also seen this from other first generation peers whose fathers literally worked themselves into the hospital. When one step away from marginalization is to attain status — to be more American than the Americans — work is a helluva incentive. Of course, I would expect that the goal for many parents is to give their kids something that they didn’t have — wealth and inclusion.
With all those efforts, my father didn’t exactly leave me with nothing, but there really wasn’t much there financially. Not the best strategist, my dad certainly worked, but he also played and wasn’t that wise about how money was spent. My mom went from being a working co-parent to being a working single parent and when she eventually remarried, my stepdad offered me a life that my dad wasn’t able to — not just by his paternal presence but with the gift of a debt-free college education.2
In the long run, I did receive an inheritance from my deceased parent. We all do. My father and the family he created was/is well-educated, middle class, with nationality in the United States as Puerto Rican citizens. I was raised in a diverse North American suburb with incredible proximity to art, culture, international discourse.
My father gave me choices. This was my inheritance.
Same as the children of immigrants or first generation parents, I sit with the questions of legacy, assimilation, and definitions of “hard work”. What do I do with this inheritance? How much ambition comes from first generation guilt, how much is ego, and how much is capitalism?
My career is dictated by a media environment that sits on a precipice every few weeks — will this (FILL IN THE BLANK3) or won’t this go away? Currently, as I sit in an unexpected transition period, I ask myself — what will I choose moving forward with my choices to invest in career, ego, fear, and community?
There’s often a rolodex of peers that show up in my head like Obi-Wans challenging me about my measures of success.
Out of all my peers, Peter is the quiet recipient of my anger. When I come across his posts, I find myself saying, “well, what do your wife or kids have to say about this? You sure are productive but are you a good dad? How much time are you actually spending with your child? Will your child eventually say to you, ‘was it worth it, dad?’”
All of this is internal — Peter hears none of this (I mean, how could he with his busy aardvark juggling schedule). Instead, I tell myself — it doesn’t have to be this way. You have choices.
Decades after my dad’s death, I’m left with the complicated feelings of the life he gave me versus the life he would’ve lived if our upbringing was more humble. The life if he had managed money well, if he had decided to work less, if his ambition and insecurities didn’t take the better of him, if he took more pride in himself as an antidote against the marginalization he felt.
I’m constantly sitting with this as I look at my own insecurities, my own ambition, my worries in becoming a father.
After decades of managing the loss of loved ones, I can say it never goes away. It never leads to acceptance — I don’t fully believe in that step. It just morphs. If I’m lucky, I can point to the way grief rears its head. The best tool this inescapable emotion has given me is in recognizing its reappearance in my life. And the greatest gift from that acknowledgement is grace.
Grace for myself.
Grace for my dad.
My dad who came to the states and entered the military during a time when there was much animosity towards Puerto Ricans (I’m not saying current acceptance towards Latinos is top-notch, either). There was a hill he needed to climb that I will never have to. I don’t have to fight for status because of an accent. My English is so much better than my father’s. While I adopted an ambiguously ethnic look, I’m not barred from spaces. I’ve never experienced the level of poverty he did in pre-”Manos a la Obra” Puerto Rico.
Because of what he did, I have choices.
I have grace for my dad.
And, at times, I have grace for Peter.
I hope there isn’t a day after his passing when his son stares at your accolades and asks, “was it worth it?”
Maybe Peter’s son won’t have to say this. I don’t know what Peter does for his family or what motivates his need to excel. I’m not there to see how he treats his son. How he plans on retiring. How he will never miss a day to see his child to sleep. How he and his son will look back on a life that was balanced with ambition and as peaceful, constant presence for his boy. That could just be the quiet valor Peter’s not sharing with us online. He could very well be doing that.
But, I mean the whole “two books over the holidays” thing is pretty obnoxious, right? Calm down, Steven King.
🏅 this week’s staff picks — DEAD DAD EDITION 🏅
🚻 Bart Heynen’s spent years capturing a beautiful archive of gay fatherhood.
💃🏽🕺🏽 For sons of dead dads, the personal jukebox must include Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Someday Never Comes and Clarence Carter’s Patches.
🎧 This American Life’s 2011 Father’s Day episode is so damn varied and tremendous.
👔👗 A few years back, the writer (and the man who makes my suits!) Nathaniel “Natty” Adams asked 11 dandy’s, including me, to share style lessons we picked up from our dads.
🎥 Unresolved dad stuff? Ryan Coogler’s Creed is the current gold standard but, oooof, I got a list if you wanna weep about good paternal actions. Cue up Michael Stuhlbarg’s final monologue to Timothy Chalemet in Call Me By Your Name, Hal Holbrook asking to adopt Emile Hirsh in Into the Wild, Mahershala Ali talking to Chiron about homosexuality in Moonlight, Bruce Willis’ arc in Moonrise Kingdom, John Ritter as surrogate father in Sling Blade, Bill Withers working with his daughter in Still Bill, and, honestly, the late Robin Harris talking to Kid about his future in House Party.
(Pssst, want more film recommendations? Follow me on Letterboxd)
I’ve been asked to participate in the latest iteration of Audio Flux — where artists create three minute audio pieces based on a prompt. We will be debuting our work at this year’s Tribeca Film festival.
June 11 @ 8:30pm | SVA Theater, NYC | 🎟️ TICKETS 🎟️
New Yorkers, join us every Saturday (weather permitting) from 2-4pm for FREE bomba workshops, sponsored by El Grito starting again this Saturday atop THE majestic Sunset Park — boricua-led but open to all🪘
Adios, ciao ciao, byeeeeeeeee,
Mark ✌🏼
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“Peter” is not his real name.
This option afforded to some is rarely acknowledged in terms of status (especially amongst peers in media) — the incredible privilege of choosing careers and lifestyle paths because we’re not encumbered by the financial albatross of student loans. I really want to shout about this whenever I can.
‘Company”, “position”, “technology”, “medium”, “interest”, “funding”, “tech money”, “smell” (because sometimes it does just stink)
Tears in my eyes
Wishing you a cloud of comfort on your dadversary. Also stfu PETER