Tragicomic

I put my phone in my pocket and recorded my remarks which you can listen to here: 

Hello.

My name is Ethan Miller.

I met David in Arkansas on Thursday. He’s well-known for staying after his shows to sign books and chat with his fans. I was at the end of the line on Thursday night and I did not meet David until nearly two and a half hours after his show had ended.

When it was my turn to have my book signed he asked me what I did. I told him I’m a writer and that I’m looking to get my work out there.

He paused for a moment before looking up at me and saying in that voice we all know and love,

“Would you like to open for me?”

I told him that I would very much like to do so. I packed up my car in my hometown of Springfield, Missouri--a city which David once publicly called “hideous” and “the most depressing city in the United States”--and drove here.

Thank you David for the opportunity and thank you all for listening to me tonight.

 --

When my older brother died, my family’s life took on an air of tragedy. There was constant heartache, deep despair, and years of awkward adjustment to the new arrangement of being two parents and only one child.

There were particular consequences to having this experience at the young age of 17 as well.

I experienced emotions that no adult, let alone an adolescent, really knows how to process in a healthy way. My mental health went down the drain along with my ambition and my conception of my place in the world. I experienced a kind of pain, so sharp and so aching, that seemed as if it ripped apart my very being that has, to this day, not yet been fully put back together.

However, there were perks as well.

First of all, upon my brother’s death I inherited an entirely new wardrobe and a much nicer car. I had always felt that my brother was the favorite child and, after his death, I finally had in my possession all of his favorite child things.

His death was also an excuse to exempt myself from a slew of responsibilities I did not want to fulfill. “No, I would not like to attend this meeting of the service club that I only joined to boost my college application. My brother just died!”

And, best of all, there was a series of wide-eyed, opened-armed girls who just wanted to make me feel better. The sympathy-tinged love that I received in the wake of that loss might very well have been the thing that kept me alive during those first dark years.

Yes, when a loved one dies, there are lows, of course. We know these lows. But, do not be mistaken: there are highs as well.

--

I studied French in college and one of the first things you learn to talk about in a beginner French class is your family.

During my first spoken exam, less than a year after my only brother’s death, I was posed the question “Combien des frères et souers as-tu?” (How many brothers and sisters do you have?)

When faced with this question I hesitated for a moment. I searched for the words required to express my brother’s existence in the past tense, but I had not yet learned them.  

After choking on a few French words, I responded in English “My brother is dead” before quickly departing as a fit of sobs overtook my body. For this display I received a low mark and a sympathetic note.

However, later that week when posed the same question while sat across from a rather lovely girl in the dining hall, my answer was met not with points off of my grade, but with a delicate hand on my forearm, the subtle tilt of a head, and a pouted lip that said, “Let me take that pain away from you.”

--

My brother Luke’s sudden, tragic death also saved me repeatedly from facing the consequences of my own actions.

Sophomore year, my Spring semester was accompanied by a weeks-long bender during which I did coke, molly, acid, ketamine, smoked weed every day, drank every night, and stayed up as late as I needed to in order to never go to bed alone.

Of course, this kind of behavior takes a toll on the mind of a young scholar.

As the semester drew to a close I had stopped attending class and the possibility of finishing my finals was beginning to seem remote.

I sent an email to a dean saying that I was massively depressed, that I could not stop thinking about my brother, and that I just wanted to go home.

This was true. I spent most nights during this time clutching a vile of my brother’s ashes to my chest and muttering to myself about how I wished he was still here.

However, the particulars of my academic failures at the time might have had more to do with the serotonin-depleting effects of MDMA rather than the sheer potency of my grief.

The dean responded to my email saying that I would be excused from finishing my finals on time and that I should make arrangements to turn them in to my professors when I felt ready.

By the time I received his response I was already at the airport on my way home.

--

Death, and the grief that accompanies it, is the best excuse you will ever get. So, I say to you, as someone who was forced to walk through the fire of that pain and that loneliness at quite a young age: Use it!

The next time a loved one dies, quit your job and go travel the world! Do it dramatically! They’ll probably take you back and say something like “Well she was really going through such a hard time then, her mother had just died for goodness sake!”

Tell someone at a bar “His death taught me that you never know how long you’ll get to be here, so we really just have to make the best of it” before having fantastic drunken sex!

Use death as an excuse to live.

This life is arduous, and strange, and sometimes so very dark. Death does not cast a shadow over your life, it turns up the contrast. Do not forget about the highlights.

Thank you David and thank you all again.