The Page I Won't Read

I went to a funeral the other day. My friend Tom’s father died. He was a much-beloved former principal of a local high school. The crowd at his wake snaked out the church door and down the sidewalk. The online obituary about his life and death drew many e-comments from colleagues, former students, and people who didn’t know him but wished they did. The church service and burial had gravitas.

As always happens at funerals, my mind drifted to the important people in my life who have, as my ALDA friend Larry says, “graduated”--my parents, a brother, my father-in-law, other relatives, friends from all periods of my life who died far too early in their own life. Death happens.

I’m not particularly phobic about death. I’ve seen it up close and I don’t avoid ICUs or wakes. I’m sort of okay with my own death as long as the Cubs win the World Series first. Make of that what you will.

But one thing that spooks me is obituaries. I’ve skipped the obituary pages of newspapers my whole life. That’s not surprising when you’re young and six or seven decades of separation from death. But I’m not all that young anymore (which is surprising) and still I move gingerly around and through the section that carries the death notices.

When I was growing up, if my father wasn’t doing the daily crossword, he seemed to look at nothing in the Tribune but the obituaries. I’d walk in the kitchen and he’d have the obit listings spread out before him, a newsprint graveyard with entries arranged like headstones in columns down the page. I didn’t fully appreciate the significance of the page until I was older, but I did learn the words “nee” and “in lieu,” terms found almost nowhere else on Earth in a complete sentence.

My mother also scanned the obituaries when she wasn’t buying high-fat foods. She was our primary herald of death, telling my brothers and me when a family friend or relative had died. You could tell by the sigh in her voice when bad news was coming; it was either a death or she’d seen our report cards.

During my carefree, indestructible 20s and 30s, I did the sports pages and comics, not the obituaries. The world wasn’t particularly big back then and deaths were conveyed by phone tree; because I became deaf the tree branched to my brothers or friends, who brought me the news in person. I actually went to an awful lot of wakes those years—my parents, parents of friends, relatives, even some of my own friends, suddenly gone—but I didn’t find out about a single one of those deaths by reading the obits.

As gray crept into my beard and my 10k times slowed, my brother Bob became the new herald of death. He’s an ophthalmologist with many elderly patients, and he reads the obits religiously to keep track of them. Bob also knows most of my friends from days gone by, and provides me with secondary coverage in case I don’t hear about a death from somebody else.

Why do I avoid the obits? Why will I read every page in the newspaper except that one? Probably because I don’t want people I know and love to graduate, to die. It’s irrational and semi-irresponsible, but if I don’t see a death notice then the fabric of my life remains whole, unchanged, young. It’s the kind of fantasy world thinking you find in Faulkner and Sendak. Let the wild rumpus start.

Not too long ago I noticed that my wife was reading the obits every day. When I first realized this, I said:

“Why are you reading the obits every day?”

“To find out who died,” she said.

“Oh.”

So now I have secondary coverage in the kitchen.

Actually, Facebook and other social networks are the only secondary coverage any of us need these days. Obits have never traveled so fast. A second or two after someone dies, the news appears at the top of our queue, just above an entry like “We are sunnin’ and funnin’ in Cancun! Woo-hooo!!”

But seriously, it’s easy to imagine a site like Facebook replacing the funeral parlor, church, and cemetery as the definitive place for mourning. A status of “Dead” will trigger the ultimate wake, with comments from hundreds of Friends, along with photos, videos, and selected posts by the departed. The burial--official removal of the person’s account—will prompt a notification both to Friends and to People You May Know.

We all need to prepare for this future; we need to revise our wills with instructions on how we want to be memorialized on Facebook. After several days of contemplation, I think I’m ready to get the lawyer and the notary. When I graduate, I want my Facebook status to permanently read: “Bill Graham, nee Superstar….[yadda yadda]…in lieu of burial change Profile to say, in bold face, Summa cum laude.” And put a tassel on my virtual urn.

Out, Out, Brief Candle

“What do you want for your birthday?” Karina asked when I picked her up at O’Hare recently. Karina is my wife. Her given name is Karen but I haven’t called her that in 20 years. Karina is more exotic.

“Nothing,” I said quickly, moving around an Avis shuttle that blocked half a lane.

“Well, what do you want to do?” she said.

“Nothing.”

“Do you want to go out for dinner?” Karina said, exasperation creeping in.

“No.”

“What can I make for you then?”

“Nothing!” I said, eyes darting at the rear view mirror. “Nothing. Okay?”

She let out a sigh that said “What a jerk.”

“Okay," I said. "Make enchiladas. Whatever. I’m trying to drive.”

Karina then turned on the radio loudly, and she let me drive.

Although we are both half-Polish and thus agree on practically everything, Karina and I are Poles apart on what constitutes best practices for birthday celebrations. There’s no disagreement on how to celebrate the kids’ birthdays, of course--gifts, cake, candles, The Song, and immunity from being grounded are universal traditions dating back to the earliest laser tag parties in Olduvai Gorge. But our cultural lockstep veers wildly when it comes to birthdays of adult family members.

In Karina’s family, adult birthdays are Mardi Gras events that can span several days: gifts, cake, and The Song with the nuclear family; a repeat engagement with the extended family; and maybe dinner at the kind of restaurant where after the meal a posse of servers clap, chant, and snake dance around booths bearing a complimentary dessert with a sparkle candle.

In my family, birthdays pass without hoopla. It’s a good year when we remember to email one another, and a great year when we get the date right. The acknowledgement is always welcome, while the greetings go something like this: “Happy birthday, brother. Hope you have a great day. Did you get a job yet?”

Similarly, for many years the gift-giving practices of our respective families—particularly at Christmas—bore no resemblance to one another. Ironically, in this case it was my family that hemorrhaged excess.

In Karina’s family, everyone asks each other what they want for Christmas. They then go forth to stores or catalogues and buy the requested gifts. On Christmas Day the gifts are unwrapped and the recipient exclaims: “Oh my God, it’s beautiful! Thank you so much!!” “You’re very welcome,” the giver responds. “I knew you’d like it.”

In my family, on the other hand, exchanging gifts at Christmas involved surprise and intrigue. The giver might spend days or even weeks independently analyzing a person’s interests and needs before springing for a gift.

My brother Pat was the undisputed King of Family Christmas Shopping. Pat took extraordinary pride in finding the perfect, most delightful gifts for each family member. Most years he began to research well before Thanksgiving; he’d visit dozens of stores by foot, bike, and bus—he didn’t drive—finally compiling a short list of candidates over which he’d agonize for days. His final selections were always clever, unexpected, and fanciful. So fanciful in fact that upon opening Pat’s gifts at least one family member would invariably ask: “What is it?” Pat would then explain at length just why the gift was so delightful.

I ranked second only to Pat in my gift-giving efforts. I didn’t spend quite as much time shopping as he did, but I prized myself on creativity and an exquisite finishing touch. For each gift I created a riddle and taped it to the wrapping paper. People read the riddle and tried to guess their gift. It was great fun, especially when they guessed wrong.

One year, trying to out-Pat Pat I bought him a rock for Christmas. Not a glitzy souvenir-shop geode or gemstone--which I knew his nonconformist streak would find mundane--but a dull brown sedimentary stone about the size of a fist. It had numerous bicolored pockmarks and an interesting shape but was otherwise mundane, which meant Pat might like it.

I wrapped the rock in a small box stuffed with paper to make it less identifiable. Then I composed the obligatory riddle and taped it on. I don’t remember the riddle, but something like this would have been typical: “This gift is hard to guess, it came from Sly Stallone, if it hits you in the jaw, you’ll be bleeding to the bone.”

Pat pursed his lips and ran a hand through his hair. He raised an index finger in the “wait” sign, closed his eyes, and swayed back and forth, summoning his muse of logic. Finally, he opened his eyes and with a maniacal grin thrust his finger high in the air. “A ROCK!” he said triumphantly, to my dismay. But I too could claim victory: He liked the damn thing.

My family’s Christmas gift-giving tradition has, fortunately, evolved. Children came along and nobody had the energy or time for suspense. Now we are assigned one person and one person only to buy a present for. Creativity has languished; gift cards to Target are not uncommon. Nevertheless, my brother Pat refuses to observe the new rules and continues to buy unusual gifts for us all. He doesn’t have kids though, so he can be forgiven.

But back to where we started: birthday celebrations. I hate to be curmudgeonly about this. It’s bad enough to turn a year older without also turning into Andy Rooney. But unless it’s a big round-number age, adult birthday celebrations annoy me. On my birthdays I don’t want hoopla and I don’t want several encores of The Song. (Raise your candles, people...one more time!) Acknowledgment, Karina, the kids, and maybe a small cake work fine, and enchiladas would be delightful.

I Cry

I cry a lot. I’m sorry, I can’t help it. Oh, I don’t mean the kind of crying where tears run down the face and leave a trail like snail slime on the cheeks, although I do that too on occasion. My crying tends to be more subtle, a gradual accumulation of mist in both eyes that calls hay fever to mind or an attack of pepper spray.

Just about anything remotely cry-worthy can get me going. (The look on my wife’s face typically says: “Oh, no…”) I probably have a hormonal/mood problem that involves low levels of endorphins. I could take pills, I guess, or stay on a tread climber all day to counteract the condition. But I choose to accept my tears as evidence that I’m human, something I try to validate whenever I can.

Although the sheer range and versatility of my crying truly set me apart, my tears most often fall into two traditional boo-hoo categories: the kids and movies. For most parents, kids are the slamma jamma dunks of crying jags. Our kids are 12 and 14 now, ages at which they figuratively drive us to tears. (I know, I know: it gets worse.) But if I dwell on memories of them as little people—the cake-smeared birthday faces, the Santa Clause letters, the unconditional nature of their affection—real tears form and can achieve snail-slime status as long as Chuck E. Cheese isn’t involved.

And it’s not just the past: thinking forward in time to the kids’ inevitable departures from home also makes me choke up. Unless I get my act together fast, I’m going to be an utter wreck when they go off to college, much less graduate. Almost any school milestone melts me. Take last spring when the kids left the house to take the bus to elementary school together for the last time. They were 30 feet apart walking down the sidewalk and sniping at each other as they always do, but my tear ducts decided this was a lachrymal event. If my wife hadn’t been there with a demeanor consistent with feeding the dogs I might have lost it entirely.

While lots of people cry at movies, few span as many genres as I do. I cry at musicals, monster movies (King Kong utterly slays me), action and adventure movies, chick flicks, disaster films, romantic comedies, utter crap (I mean, Shark Boy and Lava Girl?), every animated film made since Snow White (1937), and any movie with a happy ending, which means 95 percent of movies rated PG-13 or under, the only kind I’ve gone to for the last decade.

Probably the most brutal film on me in recent years was Marley & Me, about an impossibly rambunctious Yellow Lab puppy that becomes the mainstay of a somewhat unsettled family. I love dogs and have had many in my life. One of my special favorites was Martha, a Black Lab our kids remember as their first dog. She had a quiet dignity, intelligence, beauty, and gentleness that won everyone’s hearts, even our cat’s.

I was responsible for exercising Martha, and we played Frisbee and ran trails together for years; when she got older I walked her on the same half-mile route every night, rain or snow. The whole family adored Martha and when it came time we all huddled around the vet’s exam table and pet her as she died. When we got home my wife and I walked Martha’s half-mile route in tribute, as I wept openly.

Except for his wild, destructive puppyhood, Marley reminded me of Martha: a Lab, about the right size, about the same smile, a six-letter name that started M-a-r. The movie moved along sweetly enough until Marley started to gray around the muzzle and there was still 30 minutes to go in the film. Then it became clear where Marley & Me was heading: to Old Yeller Land. Marley was going to die, which I hadn’t prepared for.

After another ten minutes of increasing discomfort, I couldn’t watch the screen anymore. So I looked away--at the ceiling, the wall, my watch, the beverage cup. I sang songs to myself, clenched my lips, fingered my Blackberry, bit my tongue, sang more songs. But nothing helped: my faucets started running full blast. And the tears kept flowing through the credits scroll. It didn’t help that my son was bawling in my wife’s arms when the lights came up.

As we left the theater my daughter glanced at me and stopped in her tracks. Then she touched my elbow and said: “Daddy, you’re crying. I’ve never seen you cry before.” And I’m thinking: “Where have you been all these years, Sugar? No wonder I can’t get you to clean your room. I have to cry to get your attention?”

Maybe so. Maybe so. Snail-slime style.

They Said I Was High Classed

When I was growing up my house was relatively devoid of song. My two oldest brothers learned piano from my mother—who could, as they say about top athletes, play—and my other brother took violin lessons. But I, the baby of the family, only made music with a baseball bat in my hands. I played a pretty mean basketball as well.

My parents just didn’t do songs. My father listened mostly to talk radio, although he loved Perry Mason and The Jackie Gleason Show on TV; mom enjoyed the run of afternoon soap operas but very little else. That was pretty much the extent of what passed for pop culture in my house. Not particularly memorable unless you liked Raymond Burr and Joe the Bartender.

We had some record albums in the basement, largely the Mitch Miller sing-along kind. I played them occasionally and learned the songs. Singin’ in the Rain, Heart of My Heart, Yellow Rose of Texas, Ain’t We Got Fun--these are the nerdy tunes that formed my musical fundament, and many of them I couldn’t get out of my head after I became deaf and could no longer make out lyrics. You might call them a follow-the-bouncing-ball form of tinnitus.

I did learn songs on my own and through my friends, of course. I liked folk singers like Bob Dylan, Peter, Paul, and Mary, and The Kingston Trio. And when rock took off I took off with it, so the early Beatles also comprise my musical memory. The last song I remember learning all the way through with my ears was Light My Fire by The Doors. You know that it would be untrue, you know that I would be a liar, if I were to say to you that I memorized any subsequent song without seeing the words on paper. All these other songs, I like to say, are after my time.

At ALDA conventions, Saturday night is karaoke night. It’s an ALDA tradition, and many would say the hallmark of ALDAcons. Most ALDAns grew up surrounded by song, and karaoke brings it all back, often with stunning emotional force. With the support of other deafened people singing badly, even a song-deprived person like me gravitates towards the karaoke dance floor and stage. Nobody requests Mitch Miller, but Puff the Magic Dragon and Love Me Do—two very golden oldies--are universal favorites that get me going.

This year, like most years, I put in a bid to the DJ for Hound Dog, an Elvis staple. The song carries special significance for me since every time we go to Six Flags, my young son Tony does a Hound Dog solo on the karaoke stage. If the cheers and high fives he gets from the crowd are any indication, he’s quite good.

I had passed around my Blackberry showing photos of Tony doing his Six Flags gig when the ALDAcon DJ spun Hound Dog. I impulsively dashed onto the stage and grabbed the mike. Like son, like father. And I proceeded to give it my best, which basically means I sweat through my shirt and underwear.

Afterwards a number of people said “great job” and I got a few high fives. I think there might have been applause, too, but I was too busy searching for a dry napkin to notice.

It wasn’t until I got back home and saw Dave Litman’s video of Hound Dog that I realized I had been singing solo on the stage. Ken Arcia and Marylyn Howe were on each side of me playing what amounted to air guitars and Tess Crowder, a CART writer, had provided hip-swiveling dance accompaniment. But I was the only one singing into a mike. Jeez.

The whole thing blew me away. Even some hearing people had complimented me, which meant that it wasn’t just sweat that had won the kudos but also, astonishingly, my voice. They said I was high classed! In just three minutes, I had disproved the long-held notion that deaf people can do anything hearing people can do but sing.

I’ve been back from ALDAcon almost a week now but karaoke songs keep spinning through my head, a tinnitus of the soul. I have plenty of other good memories from the convention, but I have to say the Hound Dog thing is my favorite. And next year I’m going to top it and once again refute dogma. Against all odds, I’m gonna catch me a rabbit.

(Well…that was just a lie. But don’t write me off.)

Crappy Sign

Several years ago I quietly dubbed my style of signing “ALDA Crappy Sign.” The term derived from the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA), where other people sign just like me, or even worse. Recently Howard Rosenblum, the brilliant incoming CEO of the National Association for the Deaf, suggested that my term be made more generic and called simply CSL—Crappy Sign Language. That made good sense and now I too refer to persistently vague and misguided signing as CSL.

I used the term CSL for the first time in a public forum last week while speaking at the ALDA convention in Colorado Springs. It got laughs, as I knew it would, but afterwards people came up and thanked me for calling a crooked spade a crooked spade. I guess it validated their own fractured efforts to sign and made their world safe for mediocrity.

For many deafened adults, there’s undeniable practicality in using CSL. When I communicate verbally with others, there are many words I can’t hear, lipread, or guess at correctly in context. In such cases, miming, exaggerated mouthing and facial expressions, and exceptional slowness in connecting signs with words—the key characteristics of Crappy Sign—often come to my rescue.

I probably speak for Crappy Signers everywhere in saying that the most important factor for understanding a conversation is pacing. We cannot, repeat: cannot, follow fast signing. Even one fast sign in a sea of pokey ones can upset the applecart of comprehension.

Most sign language interpreters don’t get it. They are trained in rapid-fire ASL, perhaps the most elegant and evocative mode of communication ever invented. By association, interpreters are elegant and evocative when they use it. And the faster they go the more elegant and evocative they become. But in the CSL universe, speed kills communication. That road kill on the ASL Highway is my brain.

I’d love to be fluent in ASL, but I never will be. If I worked really hard I could maybe move up from CSL to BSL (Better Sign Language), but I doubt I’ll find time to try. Crappy Sign will remain my native method of signing, and in my eyes it’s a beautiful place. Hands move slowly, mouths go wide, and almost always I understand. Ah, home.

Badder Than Better

I have bilateral cochlear implants. One is my good CI, implanted in 1996. The other is my bad CI, which found its way to my right cochlea three years ago. In relatively quiet places one to one, I hear quite well with the good CI; with the bad one I’m lucky to make out “Daddy!” face to face in a soundproof booth.

My friend Patrick likes to put a positive spin on my CI situation, calling the 1996 model my “better” CI. But I’m more absolute: one of my CI’s is good and the other one is bad. I mean, we have two dogs in our family, a black/tan one that poops in the house and a chestnut/white one that was declared housetrained years ago. When Mr. Chestnut comes at me wagging his tail I don’t say “Better dog, better dog.” Likewise, when Mr. Black gifts me in the dining room, there is no way around the word “BAD.” So it is with my CI’s: the good one is well-trained and the bad one still poops, and very likely always will.

Anyway, I recently attended the annual conference of the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA) in Colorado Springs. ALDAcon is a love-in where people who hear badly have a remarkably good time. They do karaoke, snake dances, and other uncustomary activities and forget to be embarrassed.

Two days before the conference my good implant stopped functioning. I’m still not sure why. I had tried my best to protect it from moisture and dog drool, and our cat hadn’t batted one around in years. The good CI just up and died. I prayed for its resurrection, but when I lifted it one last time from its Dry-Aid crypt before leaving for the airport it was still lifeless.

That left me with only my bad CI for the trip to Colorado. Under the circumstances, there was no better place for me than ALDAcon. A good many ALDAns communicate badly, and others communicate worse. I wasn’t quite in the latter category because I understand slow-moving sign language (as opposed to the machine-gun form deployed by most interpreters). Nevertheless, minus my good implant, I found myself bluffing at the Con like a newbie to deafness, and tending to avoid people who couldn’t sign at all or signed too fast for me.

Eventually I put pride aside and asked people to write things down for me. And they did so, without rancor. Frankly, I understood those conversations better than many others I had using voice or sign language. It was kind of neat, actually. It evoked for me the earliest days of ALDA when Babel reigned supreme and the simple act of communicating with pencil and paper seemed so precious. I got a bit of that buzz from the paper pads at ALDAcon.

Which is not to say that I don’t want my good CI or its replacement online soon. I do. As soon as possible. Please. Because when all is said, signed, and written, I love it to death. The bad CI? Let’s just say it keeps me honest.