Absolutely wonderful, Cole. Swigs of whiskey with your father on his deathbed. A truly human moment. Wise, you are, for maximizing that moment in time.
I don't know if it's something I chose to do, as much as it was something that happened to me. That all said, I was hyper-conscious of the experience to a degree I couldn't have been had my mother not already died. So, maybe I was? It's hard to say. Thank you for reading.
Just finished reading your essay. I’m sitting in my daughter’s living room caring for her & son after the accidental death of her husband & soulmate. One week after his untimely death my mother passed. Your gift has given me much solace & food for future processing of our collective grief. My sincere thanks & gratitude.
John, what a terrible comment to read. My heart goes out to you and your family. Grief is trauma and trauma rewrites our lives and identities, there is no way around it. It's the thing we all wish we could save our loved ones from, but there is no escaping it. With every loss, I empathize more and more with my parents and grandparents who watched one after another person around them die and yet somehow went on. There is no way your daughter and grandson will ever truly recover, but I hope you all find some way to endure this tragedy in the short term and, in the long run, some way to live with it.
One of the most moving things I’ve read on Substack - it was a skillful weave of the complexities of our closest relationships and how we interact with them and our ‘truths’. So well done and thank you (I am not a crier but tears are flowing). 🙏🏼
Man bro you damn sure know how to write!!! This was real good stuff here. I was messing around with a term I was calling “functional truth” like a functional addict (my mom was in her younger years a functional alcoholic). In that I don’t want to lie but -if I do say the truth -it will take the conversation or interaction into a whole different context. So most would lie to keep the status quo.
But I look at it like screenwriting, here’s a crumb of truth. Hopefully you’ll be curious enough to keep coming around for more crumbs to get the whole thing. I do this a lot at work.
I work in New York real estate from the security/first responder side of things. So I realized I will tell the truth -but not everything. Hey they paid get six figures if they don’t want to ask a follow up oh well.
However if it’s a tourist trying to get around town. I feel here tell them as much as they need to know. Take this train and get off here and skip that other route you had in mind.
I think it comes to who are these relationships with?
Work, parents, friends so on and so on. Also the moment; stressed, routine work etc.
The people? A bunch SBF and Theranos fraudsters, or just a bunch of jerks whose position was handed to them? (Which is how NYC commercial reality works).
I leave with this. I am working on a story about perhaps NYC most notorious crooked cop, Michael Dowd. He worked out of the precinct that covered my neighborhood. Here’s the thing.
Everyone in the NYPD brass knew what he and his crew was doing.
But the truth would’ve ruined careers. So they let a bunch of beat cops commit the type of corruption usually scene via tactical police squads.
The Training Day character Alonzo Harris was based on a cop from the LAPD’s notorious CRASH unit.
In The Shield, the show is written that Mackie is the head of a skilled unit. What makes Dowd different than what you saw in Serpico-which played a role in why Dowd got away with it for along; is Dowd was making BIG MONEY, not a Benjamin slipped here and there. He was nothing more than a C average beat cop.
This guy was getting $4000/week from drug dealers for protecting.
This is 1980’s money. But again everyone in NYPD knew. They wanted to not accept the truth.
A bunch regular uninformed cops were doing coke in uniform in their patrol cars like they were eating a bagel with a cup of coffee. These guys had no power, there’s no higher ups protecting them.
Their higher ups accepted the lie. Which meant there was as much coke in East New York in 1989 to keep Tony Montana happy for the rest of his life.
But if the higher ups would’ve acted on the truth my life and my hood is probably a lot better off. But then they don’t get to retire as a captain with the captain pension the. go down to Florida to bitch about how effed up NYC is. Oh and there’s a doc about this called “The 7-5” which is rhe 75th precinct. Your head will explode!
This was excellent timing for me as I’m currently at work on my mother’s eulogy… or using Notes to procrastinate. It’s hard to know how much truth to tell, or sometimes even what truth looks like when it comes to our parents. There are no unobstructed views of the past. But this was a very helpful perspective for me right now. Beautifully done and much appreciated.
Oh, Tara, I'm so sorry your mother has left us. As you read my essay, you know I understand your grief all too well. Eulogies are such overwhelming things, aren't they? We strive to somehow perfectly honor our loved ones, as if words could ever sum up a life or express how we felt -- and continue -- to feel about them. And yet, I only vaguely remember what I said about both of my parents. In my mother's case, I think I only do now because others were moved by it and remember it. Perhaps that's the true point of eulogies in the end. Maybe we try to make it about ourselves, but what we're really trying to do is alleviate the much less crippling grief others feel about the loss. They'll leave the funeral or such, their spirits lifted by the experience in some way. Meanwhile, we go home and have to live with the missing limb that words did not somehow cauterize. The experience is different for everyone, I'm sure. Again, my heart goes out to you and your family.
I heard myself gasp a few times while reading this. Possibly because my mother got upset with me recently for revealing what she thinks is too much about my past. We remain petulant teenagers to some extent is so true (this was my first gasp!). Beautiful writing, Cole. Thank you.
It's remarkable how, no matter how old we get, we never really mature past being someone else's kids...until they're gone and our kids and their petulance (if we chose to have kids) become our penance.
What a beautiful story Cole, thank you for sharing.
It’s true, some lies we have accepted as permissible. We lie every time we tell our children about Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy. We lie every time we tell someone it will be alright when we have no way of knowing whether that’s actually true.
And, while I appreciate honesty more than lies most of the time, I will agree there are certainly times when it’s appropriate.
Absolutely wonderful, Cole. Swigs of whiskey with your father on his deathbed. A truly human moment. Wise, you are, for maximizing that moment in time.
I don't know if it's something I chose to do, as much as it was something that happened to me. That all said, I was hyper-conscious of the experience to a degree I couldn't have been had my mother not already died. So, maybe I was? It's hard to say. Thank you for reading.
Well said
Thank you for reading.
You're welcome always God bless you and your family
Just finished reading your essay. I’m sitting in my daughter’s living room caring for her & son after the accidental death of her husband & soulmate. One week after his untimely death my mother passed. Your gift has given me much solace & food for future processing of our collective grief. My sincere thanks & gratitude.
John, what a terrible comment to read. My heart goes out to you and your family. Grief is trauma and trauma rewrites our lives and identities, there is no way around it. It's the thing we all wish we could save our loved ones from, but there is no escaping it. With every loss, I empathize more and more with my parents and grandparents who watched one after another person around them die and yet somehow went on. There is no way your daughter and grandson will ever truly recover, but I hope you all find some way to endure this tragedy in the short term and, in the long run, some way to live with it.
Cole's lines are so genuine. I admire his talent.
Thanks, Tom, I appreciate that.
This was very moving. It is so well written and really shares your feelings amazingly well.
Thanks, Jon.
I love your writing. What you explore is so powerful. Thank you. 🙏 ✨
Thank you so much, Jen, I appreciate the lovely note. And thank you for reading.
Welp I'm crying in my coffee this morning! This was wonderful. Thank you. ❤️
Sorry, Damian, but thank you for reading and the lovely note.
One of the most moving things I’ve read on Substack - it was a skillful weave of the complexities of our closest relationships and how we interact with them and our ‘truths’. So well done and thank you (I am not a crier but tears are flowing). 🙏🏼
Thank you so much for the lovely note, Tracy, and for sharing it elsewhere here. I'm sorry for making you cry.
Beautifully written, Cole. Profoundly moving.
Thank you for the lovely note, Jack, and for reading.
I think this on Baldwin fits this topic.
https://www.nytimes.com/audio/app/2024/08/08/podcasts/100-years-of-james-baldwin.html?referringSource=sharing
I love this, Cole. Just...love it so damn much.
Thanks, Sean. I'm caught off-guard by how much this piece has resonated with people.
Beautiful
Thank you, J.B. And for reading.
Man bro you damn sure know how to write!!! This was real good stuff here. I was messing around with a term I was calling “functional truth” like a functional addict (my mom was in her younger years a functional alcoholic). In that I don’t want to lie but -if I do say the truth -it will take the conversation or interaction into a whole different context. So most would lie to keep the status quo.
But I look at it like screenwriting, here’s a crumb of truth. Hopefully you’ll be curious enough to keep coming around for more crumbs to get the whole thing. I do this a lot at work.
I work in New York real estate from the security/first responder side of things. So I realized I will tell the truth -but not everything. Hey they paid get six figures if they don’t want to ask a follow up oh well.
However if it’s a tourist trying to get around town. I feel here tell them as much as they need to know. Take this train and get off here and skip that other route you had in mind.
I think it comes to who are these relationships with?
Work, parents, friends so on and so on. Also the moment; stressed, routine work etc.
The people? A bunch SBF and Theranos fraudsters, or just a bunch of jerks whose position was handed to them? (Which is how NYC commercial reality works).
I leave with this. I am working on a story about perhaps NYC most notorious crooked cop, Michael Dowd. He worked out of the precinct that covered my neighborhood. Here’s the thing.
Everyone in the NYPD brass knew what he and his crew was doing.
But the truth would’ve ruined careers. So they let a bunch of beat cops commit the type of corruption usually scene via tactical police squads.
The Training Day character Alonzo Harris was based on a cop from the LAPD’s notorious CRASH unit.
In The Shield, the show is written that Mackie is the head of a skilled unit. What makes Dowd different than what you saw in Serpico-which played a role in why Dowd got away with it for along; is Dowd was making BIG MONEY, not a Benjamin slipped here and there. He was nothing more than a C average beat cop.
This guy was getting $4000/week from drug dealers for protecting.
This is 1980’s money. But again everyone in NYPD knew. They wanted to not accept the truth.
A bunch regular uninformed cops were doing coke in uniform in their patrol cars like they were eating a bagel with a cup of coffee. These guys had no power, there’s no higher ups protecting them.
Their higher ups accepted the lie. Which meant there was as much coke in East New York in 1989 to keep Tony Montana happy for the rest of his life.
But if the higher ups would’ve acted on the truth my life and my hood is probably a lot better off. But then they don’t get to retire as a captain with the captain pension the. go down to Florida to bitch about how effed up NYC is. Oh and there’s a doc about this called “The 7-5” which is rhe 75th precinct. Your head will explode!
Thanks for reading and for your thoughts, James.
This was excellent timing for me as I’m currently at work on my mother’s eulogy… or using Notes to procrastinate. It’s hard to know how much truth to tell, or sometimes even what truth looks like when it comes to our parents. There are no unobstructed views of the past. But this was a very helpful perspective for me right now. Beautifully done and much appreciated.
Oh, Tara, I'm so sorry your mother has left us. As you read my essay, you know I understand your grief all too well. Eulogies are such overwhelming things, aren't they? We strive to somehow perfectly honor our loved ones, as if words could ever sum up a life or express how we felt -- and continue -- to feel about them. And yet, I only vaguely remember what I said about both of my parents. In my mother's case, I think I only do now because others were moved by it and remember it. Perhaps that's the true point of eulogies in the end. Maybe we try to make it about ourselves, but what we're really trying to do is alleviate the much less crippling grief others feel about the loss. They'll leave the funeral or such, their spirits lifted by the experience in some way. Meanwhile, we go home and have to live with the missing limb that words did not somehow cauterize. The experience is different for everyone, I'm sure. Again, my heart goes out to you and your family.
I heard myself gasp a few times while reading this. Possibly because my mother got upset with me recently for revealing what she thinks is too much about my past. We remain petulant teenagers to some extent is so true (this was my first gasp!). Beautiful writing, Cole. Thank you.
It's remarkable how, no matter how old we get, we never really mature past being someone else's kids...until they're gone and our kids and their petulance (if we chose to have kids) become our penance.
What a beautiful story Cole, thank you for sharing.
It’s true, some lies we have accepted as permissible. We lie every time we tell our children about Santa Clause or the Tooth Fairy. We lie every time we tell someone it will be alright when we have no way of knowing whether that’s actually true.
And, while I appreciate honesty more than lies most of the time, I will agree there are certainly times when it’s appropriate.
Thanks for the note and for reading, MaKenna.