WEBVTT - Bonus: In Conversation with Jennifer Senior 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:11.440 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. I'm 0:00:11.520 --> 0:00:14.680 Danny Shapiro and this is a special bonus episode of 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.959 Family Secrets. The secrets that are kept from us, the 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:20.800 secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we keep 0:00:20.800 --> 0:00:25.440 from ourselves. My guest today is the journalist Jennifer sr, 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.560 who joins me in conversation to discuss her extraordinarily moving 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:33.880 cover story in this month's Atlantic. Jen's story is about 0:00:33.880 --> 0:00:37.920 a family, the macle Veins, who lost their son Bobby, 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.920 in the attacks of nine eleven, which, unbelievably enough, happened 0:00:43.159 --> 0:00:56.080 twenty years ago. You had a personal connection to the 0:00:56.120 --> 0:01:01.280 macle Veins, Yes, although the funny thing is, how well 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:05.440 do you know these kinds of people? Really? I will 0:01:05.480 --> 0:01:08.400 describe you to you how I knew them, and you'll 0:01:08.440 --> 0:01:11.880 see they didn't etch themselves particularly deeply into my brain 0:01:11.959 --> 0:01:13.959 until after they had lost Bobby, which is a sad 0:01:14.000 --> 0:01:18.319 thing to say. They were the parents of my brother's roommate, 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:23.000 both in college and in young adulthood. My brother moved 0:01:23.000 --> 0:01:25.760 into Princeton, you know, it's freshman year. He throws his 0:01:25.800 --> 0:01:28.200 stuff on a bunk bed, and the kid on the 0:01:28.240 --> 0:01:31.600 other bunk bed was Bobby McIlvaine. And so when did 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:34.880 I see cocle Van's I saw them if we were 0:01:34.959 --> 0:01:36.680 at the end of the year picking up my brother 0:01:36.959 --> 0:01:40.600 or graduation, or then when the two of them were 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:42.560 living in New York. I would see them if I 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.560 just happened to run into them because they were in 0:01:45.640 --> 0:01:48.160 town and I was picking something up, and my brother says, 0:01:48.360 --> 0:01:51.240 you know, it wasn't a lot. I really didn't get 0:01:51.280 --> 0:01:56.080 to know them until after Bobby died. Um. And my 0:01:56.120 --> 0:02:00.440 impression of them is just that they were saintly warm 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.480 people who had devoted their lives to doing good in 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:08.120 the world. They were both teachers. They one taught, you know, 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:12.040 kids who were troubled teens who were in an adolescent 0:02:12.320 --> 0:02:17.240 psych ward at a local hospital. Another taught reading in 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:20.560 a trailer in a parking lot of a Catholic school. 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:24.280 They were lovely people. Oh and and his brother was 0:02:24.400 --> 0:02:27.280 this this cheerful, sweet kid you know, who was younger 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:31.560 and kind of goofy and uh and not nearly the 0:02:31.560 --> 0:02:35.080 go getter that his older brother was, but very funny. 0:02:35.960 --> 0:02:41.000 And Bobby made a much bigger and more singular impression 0:02:41.200 --> 0:02:45.680 upon you. It seems during the time that you knew him. 0:02:45.760 --> 0:02:48.960 Oh God, yeah, Bobby like a one off. He was 0:02:48.960 --> 0:02:52.160 like a human being that never went into full production. 0:02:52.280 --> 0:02:54.560 You know what I mean? It was he was an 0:02:54.560 --> 0:02:58.560 exceptional kid. Nobody in his family expected him to go 0:02:58.560 --> 0:03:03.000 to an Ivy League school, working class, um, you know, 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:07.400 Irish Catholic family. Uh, without any kind of expectation that 0:03:07.480 --> 0:03:10.880 he would go off and conquer the Ivy League. And 0:03:11.000 --> 0:03:14.679 he just came out freakishly smart even as this young kid. 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:20.880 And uh when I met him, he was always just 0:03:21.600 --> 0:03:27.880 filled those ideas, very lively conversation, very precocious um charisma 0:03:27.960 --> 0:03:32.280 personified I think intimidating to some people who knew him 0:03:32.360 --> 0:03:34.280 until they got to know him to realize that inside 0:03:34.280 --> 0:03:37.480 he was just a warm piece of peach pie. Um. 0:03:37.560 --> 0:03:39.960 He just was dazzling and was as if he had 0:03:39.960 --> 0:03:43.160 been sort of flung into the world from a sling shot, 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:45.120 you know what I mean. He just had lots of 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:49.080 purpose um and had that air about him that any 0:03:49.120 --> 0:03:53.320 self invented person does. They're just kind of unstoppable. There's 0:03:53.320 --> 0:03:55.720 a moment in your piece for you describe he was 0:03:55.760 --> 0:03:58.760 also athletic, and there's this moment where you describe a 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:04.040 teenage Bobby matt Vane throwing an immaculate pass uh as 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:06.920 a basketball player that sets up an immaculate shot that 0:04:06.960 --> 0:04:10.360 flies right over the teenage head of Kobe Bryant. I mean, 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:14.240 I mean it just sounds like on every level, this 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:16.920 kid was as you describe, but just a one off, 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:20.640 completely extraordinary. He was a miracle, yeah. I mean, and 0:04:20.960 --> 0:04:23.520 Kobe Bryant. That's the other thing, right, there's something almost 0:04:24.040 --> 0:04:28.840 Zelig like or Forrest Gumpian about Bobby's trajectory. Right. They 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:30.800 wound up playing each other in high school and they 0:04:30.800 --> 0:04:33.720 were the two best kids on their team, and Bobby 0:04:33.920 --> 0:04:38.159 got sixteen points off of Kobe and his teammates. I mean, 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.760 that's extraordinary. That became the stuff of legend in the 0:04:41.800 --> 0:04:47.039 mclavaine family as Kobe Bryant became Kobe Bryant. Um. Then 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:49.400 Bobby goes up to and get the hand pick to 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:53.960 take a class with Tony Morrison. And when when Bobby dies, 0:04:54.640 --> 0:04:58.640 Tony Morrison sends his family not one but two condolence 0:04:58.680 --> 0:05:01.560 notes saying, what is star Bobby was? And he just 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:05.280 kept intersecting with exceptional people, you know, that's the kind 0:05:05.320 --> 0:05:10.680 of guy he was so on on nine eleven. At first, 0:05:11.560 --> 0:05:16.760 when the planes hit the towers, there wasn't a sense 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:22.160 in the family or among Bobby's friends that that Bobby 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.360 was in the towers right there. It was just um, 0:05:25.680 --> 0:05:28.360 this horrific thing that was unfolding. But there was no 0:05:28.440 --> 0:05:32.000 reason to He didn't work there, he didn't live right there. 0:05:32.040 --> 0:05:33.479 There was no reason to think that he would have 0:05:33.520 --> 0:05:37.120 been there. He worked nearer there, he was adjacent, right 0:05:37.200 --> 0:05:41.320 But but and here's what's interesting. His mother had a 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:46.320 full on premonition, a real deep, visceral sense that something 0:05:46.400 --> 0:05:48.359 wasn't matter. It was more than just a chirp in 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:52.080 her stomach. She really thought something was wrong. But his 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:55.279 father treated it like a news event. His brother had 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:58.520 just been in the city that Thursday and appear with him, 0:05:58.520 --> 0:06:01.120 and he worked in Maryland. He had just moved there 0:06:01.440 --> 0:06:05.760 to corporate communications in Maryland. It just so happened he 0:06:05.839 --> 0:06:09.000 had to attend a conference that day, and you do 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.719 make things crazier. The theory about Bobby is that he 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:16.240 had to go to a restaurant that to windows in 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:18.880 the world that morning for a conference, but that he 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:22.960 had probably left before the planes hit, because they found 0:06:23.000 --> 0:06:25.760 his body on the periphery of the site, and that 0:06:25.839 --> 0:06:28.400 no one who was in windows on the world was found, right, 0:06:28.480 --> 0:06:30.640 I mean, everybody was incinerated if they were up there. 0:06:31.520 --> 0:06:34.960 So I want to quote something from from your Peace, 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:40.240 because really, so much of your piece is about the 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:45.599 shape or shapelessness or trajectory of grief and trauma, and 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:49.120 you right early on, the mckail vans spoke to a 0:06:49.160 --> 0:06:52.039 therapist who warned them that each member of their family 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:55.680 would grieve differently. Imagine you're all at the top of 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.159 a mountain, she told them, But you all have broken bones, 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:01.640 so you can't help each other. You have to find 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:05.599 your own way down. It was a helpful metaphor, one 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:08.599 that may have saved the mcilvaine's marriage. But when I 0:07:08.640 --> 0:07:12.840 mentioned it to Roxanne Cohen Silver, a psychology professor you see, Irvine, 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:17.240 who spent a lifetime studying the effect of sudden traumatic loss, 0:07:17.280 --> 0:07:20.720 she immediately spotted a problem with it that suggests that 0:07:20.800 --> 0:07:23.960 everyone will make it down. She told me, some people 0:07:24.440 --> 0:07:27.120 never get down the mountain at all. This is one 0:07:27.120 --> 0:07:30.080 of the many things you learn about mourning when examining 0:07:30.080 --> 0:07:35.720 it at close range. It's idiosyncratic. Anarchic polychrome A lot 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.480 of the series you read about grief are great, beautiful 0:07:38.520 --> 0:07:42.680 even they have a way of eracing individual experiences. Every 0:07:42.760 --> 0:07:48.080 morner has a different story to tell. So what I'm 0:07:48.080 --> 0:07:52.239 wondering is if you can tell us now the different 0:07:52.480 --> 0:07:59.120 stories that Bobby's parents, in particular, went through in the 0:08:00.080 --> 0:08:04.640 wake the long week of Bobby's death. Both Bob Sor 0:08:04.760 --> 0:08:09.800 and Helen. Yes, Um, they are so different that they 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:14.679 almost look like photo negatives of one another. It really 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:22.720 struck me, Um, and particularly Bob Sor his story. Helen's 0:08:22.920 --> 0:08:26.040 was more recognizable to me. It isn't how I think 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:28.240 I would have grieved, but it is a story that 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:31.040 I could have sort of seen and predicted. Which is 0:08:31.160 --> 0:08:36.040 or not knowing her. So, Helen, this is how she 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:41.080 chose to grieve. She chose to starve her grief. She 0:08:41.120 --> 0:08:44.000 didn't want people to pity her. She didn't want to 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:48.400 manage people's awkwardness. She didn't want to manage their discomfort 0:08:48.559 --> 0:08:52.320 or listen to them babbling their condolences, and she didn't 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:55.079 want to feel terrible all the time when people accidentally 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:58.880 said the wrong thing to her. She went to a 0:08:58.880 --> 0:09:01.880 different grocery store for fifteen years in order to not 0:09:02.000 --> 0:09:04.600 run into people she knew, so that no one could 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.960 sit there and just start incoherently trying to console her 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:13.400 or muttering to preprint to you know, like pointing and gossiping. 0:09:13.520 --> 0:09:17.200 She didn't want any of it. She would deflect, she 0:09:17.240 --> 0:09:21.480 would joke. It was her way of coping with it, 0:09:21.840 --> 0:09:25.080 and realized about ten years in that it wasn't serving 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.520 her very well to keep stoppering up all of her grief. 0:09:28.280 --> 0:09:31.200 She realized at some point that it was making her angry, 0:09:31.679 --> 0:09:34.120 that it was making her more of a gossip, that 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.240 she was on a shorter fuse, But she thought, no, 0:09:37.640 --> 0:09:40.600 it is additionally compounded by the fact that I am 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.160 not allowing myself to grieve, to fully inhabit this grief. 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:47.120 The only act herself to do it was with this 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:50.480 group of local women, all lost children, with whom she 0:09:50.480 --> 0:09:53.000 could speak in shorthand they all knew what it was. 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:55.400 They weren't going to single her ab for special pity. 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:57.680 She could say anything she wanted to them and it 0:09:57.760 --> 0:10:01.320 was all okay, But they understood if she said, I 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:02.760 was just with a friend of mine who went on 0:10:02.800 --> 0:10:04.840 and on and on about their child, and I just 0:10:04.880 --> 0:10:07.800 couldn't stand listening to them talk about their child. I 0:10:07.840 --> 0:10:10.240 am so jealous that she has this problem. I can't 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:13.200 listen to people talk about their child. They all got it, 0:10:13.280 --> 0:10:16.199 It all made sense, but it was very hard for her. 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:18.480 She didn't want to be a victim. She didn't want 0:10:18.520 --> 0:10:20.880 to be short, she didn't want to be short tempered, 0:10:21.120 --> 0:10:24.040 you know, or hurt. All these things. She had like 0:10:24.240 --> 0:10:27.199 a strong super ego kind of watching her own reactions. 0:10:27.880 --> 0:10:32.160 That was helen. She gave the impression of having quote 0:10:32.200 --> 0:10:36.640 unquote healed because she wasn't talking about it and she 0:10:36.800 --> 0:10:40.800 was you know, moving on with her life. And so 0:10:41.440 --> 0:10:46.680 it was this impossible conundrum totally one of her own making, right, 0:10:47.160 --> 0:10:50.920 exactly right, she needed to do that in order to 0:10:50.960 --> 0:10:53.360 get through the day. That was in some ways her 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:56.600 version of grieving was not grieving or not externally showing it. 0:10:56.920 --> 0:11:03.120 And yet exactly something some part of her was permanently 0:11:03.920 --> 0:11:05.880 you know, there was a scar tissue on top of 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:09.240 a whole bunch of stuff that had not stitched up. 0:11:09.920 --> 0:11:14.160 There was something painfully paradoxical about this situation, right that 0:11:14.200 --> 0:11:17.000 she was like all stitched up, but just a watery 0:11:17.080 --> 0:11:20.160 mass inside. And so that was really hard. That was 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:23.320 really really hard for her um and she just woke 0:11:23.400 --> 0:11:25.120 up one morning and decided she had to do something 0:11:25.160 --> 0:11:28.920 about it, which makes her very unusual. I mean, to 0:11:29.040 --> 0:11:31.320 make an executive decision one day that you were simply 0:11:31.320 --> 0:11:35.000 going to be another person is extraordinary. And she actually 0:11:35.040 --> 0:11:38.200 did that. She actually woke up one morning and did 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:41.280 that to be she decided she wanted to be somebody else, 0:11:41.760 --> 0:11:44.320 She needed to be someone else, and so she was 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:46.560 going to be that person. And what was that someone else? 0:11:47.240 --> 0:11:51.880 Someone who engaged more with her grief and who let 0:11:52.240 --> 0:11:56.880 go of all of the anger that was just accumulating 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.600 in there. She really felt on some level like she 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.839 was marinating in a brain of her own resentment and 0:12:02.920 --> 0:12:06.319 her own fury and her own hurt, and she hadn't 0:12:06.360 --> 0:12:09.400 let it out, you know, and it was just curdling 0:12:09.400 --> 0:12:14.560 her and curdling her insights. What you just described is 0:12:14.920 --> 0:12:18.720 a version of a secret. It's you know, it's it's 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:22.280 this kind of almost one of the most toxic versions 0:12:22.320 --> 0:12:25.559 because it's that bottling up, you know, the idea of 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.120 I can make this go away if I just try 0:12:28.160 --> 0:12:32.720 hard enough, totally. And here's what's amazing, her suffering with 0:12:32.760 --> 0:12:35.400 the secret and her son died and what must have 0:12:35.480 --> 0:12:41.920 been the most public active mass murder in recent memory, right. 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.960 I mean, she was denying herself her own suffering. She 0:12:46.160 --> 0:12:49.960 was keeping it almost from herself, and it's so poignant 0:12:49.960 --> 0:12:53.720 and it can be so corrosive to our souls, you know, 0:12:53.800 --> 0:12:56.520 it can just rip us up, and I think it 0:12:56.559 --> 0:13:01.960 did her. And then meanwhile, her husband, Bobby's father, Bob Senior, 0:13:02.120 --> 0:13:08.199 was having, as you say, a completely almost polar opposite 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:12.720 kind of way way of responding. Yes, Bob was the 0:13:12.760 --> 0:13:17.439 polar opposite. Everything that was light colored on Helen's print 0:13:17.480 --> 0:13:19.360 was dark color down hairs and everything that was dark 0:13:19.360 --> 0:13:21.839 color and her print was light on his. I mean 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:26.560 that you just couldn't imagine two different ways of going 0:13:26.600 --> 0:13:31.920 about grieving for Bob's Senior. It's not just that he 0:13:32.000 --> 0:13:36.480 actively every day chooses to inhabit his grief and that 0:13:36.679 --> 0:13:40.559 he cries every day, that his grief just lives very 0:13:40.559 --> 0:13:42.920 close to the surface. You just touch him, if you, 0:13:43.480 --> 0:13:46.160 a whole vat of grief kind of spills out. It's 0:13:46.200 --> 0:13:49.800 not just that, it's that for him, every day is 0:13:49.880 --> 0:13:53.080 kind of September twelve. It's like he wakes up and 0:13:53.559 --> 0:13:56.040 he's as raw as he was almost the day he 0:13:56.080 --> 0:13:59.959 discovered it. And to me, this was just an amazing 0:14:00.040 --> 0:14:04.440 revelation because there are all these kind of cultural wide 0:14:04.520 --> 0:14:07.320 imperatives that I think we have that, oh, you've got 0:14:07.320 --> 0:14:09.400 to move on, You've got to move past your grief 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:13.720 or through your grief, or around your grief or something. Right. No, 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:18.240 not him. He had no interest. He wanted to live 0:14:18.280 --> 0:14:22.600 in his grief. It seems like his form of grief 0:14:22.880 --> 0:14:30.720 was about engaging with the details, real or imagined. Around 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:34.520 nine eleven and around Bobby's death was a way of 0:14:34.600 --> 0:14:41.600 keeping Bobby alive exactly. I mean, he treated Bobby's death 0:14:41.760 --> 0:14:45.440 as if it were an unsolved murder. He became over 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:51.760 time gradually very very interested in, um, all of the 0:14:52.400 --> 0:14:54.560 I'm going to call them conspiracy theories. He never would 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:57.440 he calls this nine eleven truth to me, the air 0:14:57.480 --> 0:15:01.600 conspiracy theories, that the government was behind this, that um, 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:05.560 this was an orchestrated hit. You know that the World 0:15:05.600 --> 0:15:09.440 Trade Center was embroidered with explosives. And he became very 0:15:09.480 --> 0:15:13.120 interested in in in sorry, explosive laid by the American 0:15:13.160 --> 0:15:17.120 government and it was, you know, a controlled debt nation. 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:22.080 He had a theory for why they actually um destroyed it. 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:24.720 That's quite arcane. What got in his mind turning, though, 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:28.840 was that it was based on looking at the medical 0:15:28.880 --> 0:15:34.040 examiners report of his son's death. You know, I think 0:15:34.080 --> 0:15:38.800 what he initially was doing was simply worrying about um. 0:15:38.840 --> 0:15:41.480 It was a very paternal instinct. He was haunted by 0:15:41.480 --> 0:15:44.480 the idea that Bobby might have suffered right before he died, 0:15:44.880 --> 0:15:47.200 that he might have expexiated, that he might have been up, 0:15:47.440 --> 0:15:49.840 that he might have jumped right, that he didn't know 0:15:49.880 --> 0:15:53.840 how he died. Um. And in getting medical examiner's report, 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:57.760 he saw how he died. I mean, he was decapitated, 0:15:57.920 --> 0:16:00.520 and which to me suggested a giant piece of to breathe, 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:03.440 you know, came boring out of the sky, and then 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:07.240 he didn't know what hit him. But for whatever set 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:11.240 of reasons, Bob Sor decided that because most of Bobby's 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:14.920 injuries were on his front, not on his back, he 0:16:14.960 --> 0:16:16.960 had he couldn't have been running away from the building, 0:16:17.160 --> 0:16:19.520 he had to have been inside it, and that this 0:16:19.640 --> 0:16:22.480 had to have been an inside job. So he started 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.080 doing a lot of reading. He started reading history. He 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:26.960 started doing all these things and came up with a 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:30.160 very laboratory for why the government might might have wanted 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:35.200 to destroy the World Trade Center. And you know, Bobby's 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:38.840 brother Jeff thinks that by saying, oh, this is merely 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.000 how he grieves, he thinks it's kind of trivializing his 0:16:42.080 --> 0:16:46.840 efforts and that maybe so the Although what I think 0:16:46.920 --> 0:16:49.600 is interesting is that Bob Senior said to me, in 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:53.360 doing this every day, he is definitely keeping his Bobby close, 0:16:53.920 --> 0:16:57.480 that this is how he spends time in Bobby's company. 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.120 So I might be giving short trip to the theory 0:17:00.120 --> 0:17:01.800 is because I don't believe in the theories. I think 0:17:01.800 --> 0:17:05.399 the theories are wrong headed. But he does not deny 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:07.880 that like they serve. It serves a purpose for him. 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.480 And in doing all this research, he gets to stay 0:17:10.480 --> 0:17:12.600 close to Bobby. He gets to do this and it's 0:17:12.640 --> 0:17:15.159 a way to keep parenting. And it we kind of 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.840 forget Bobby was so young. He was so young, he 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.600 was only twenty six. He was still probably in some 0:17:20.640 --> 0:17:24.320 way as a little boy to Bob, and he probably 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:27.320 wanted to actively parent him. You know. Still in some 0:17:27.359 --> 0:17:31.640 ways this is him being a father. We'll be right back. 0:17:39.600 --> 0:17:45.480 So Bobby kept he was a prolific journal keeper. He 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:53.359 left behind volumes and volumes of journals and thinking about 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:56.640 what it is to continue to parent, or to keep 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:00.320 someone alive, or to keep a relationship along Eve in 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:05.160 some way. You know, the journals become very very important 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:09.840 in this story. Helen and Bob, you know, have all 0:18:09.880 --> 0:18:14.560 the journals. Um. There is a young woman named Jen 0:18:15.560 --> 0:18:21.400 who is Bobby's girlfriend and is about to become Bobby's fiance. 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:26.639 He has a ring and he has asked her father 0:18:27.240 --> 0:18:31.560 for her hand in marriage, and he um is about 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:37.879 to propose to her, and of course that never happens. 0:18:38.040 --> 0:18:43.600 So Jen is his girlfriend and she doesn't have any 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:48.680 legal right to any of his possessions or belongings. And 0:18:49.480 --> 0:18:53.160 Jen asks if she can have the last journal that 0:18:53.240 --> 0:18:58.400 Bobby had been writing in, and Bob sr. Just hands 0:18:58.440 --> 0:19:02.040 it to her without a thought, like, of course, here 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:07.600 here's a piece of Bobby. So that's a perfect summary. Um, 0:19:07.600 --> 0:19:12.160 Bob Senior handed into her without giving it a second thought. 0:19:12.640 --> 0:19:16.480 Because there they were cleaning out Bobby's bedroom, there was 0:19:16.520 --> 0:19:19.840 his last remaining journal open on his desk, and Jen 0:19:20.000 --> 0:19:23.399 started reading it and noticed that she was on practically 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.960 every page, so it would be perfectly natural for her 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.919 to want to have that right, and he was distributing 0:19:30.960 --> 0:19:33.280 those journals anyway to everybody who was in the room. 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.800 It was my brother, it was two other friends. I 0:19:35.800 --> 0:19:39.760 think we're there um And he was saying, you might 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:43.040 want to look at these in order to write your eulogies, 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:45.280 because me and my wife I am not being any 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.720 shape to write them. And Helen was not even in 0:19:48.760 --> 0:19:51.680 any shape to go and clean out that bedroom. She 0:19:51.840 --> 0:19:55.359 was elsewhere. And if she had been in that bedroom, 0:19:55.480 --> 0:19:58.720 she might have stopped her husband from giving away that 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:03.600 final journal was it was hugely important to her that 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:09.720 she had every molecule of everything her son had ever had. 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.720 All the objects of the dead, a lot of them 0:20:12.720 --> 0:20:16.399 can just assume almost kind of talismanic property, like they 0:20:16.520 --> 0:20:19.920 just their proxies for the person you love. And what's 0:20:19.960 --> 0:20:23.200 so interesting about a diary is that it's not even 0:20:23.200 --> 0:20:27.119 the same as like a T shirt or a recovered photograph. 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:30.320 It's this unusual thing where you get to almost hear 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:33.640 that person's voice again and to spend time in their company. 0:20:34.200 --> 0:20:36.440 It's not a conversation or that it's not two ways, 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:42.560 but you are hearing from them. And she was so 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:46.000 devastated when she found out that her husband had given 0:20:46.000 --> 0:20:48.840 away this final journal, because here was this chance to 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:52.399 hear her son's voice one last time, and she was 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:56.040 being robbed at that opportunity. Particularly, I mean he was 0:20:56.160 --> 0:20:59.400 at that moment. She had like all of his kind 0:20:59.400 --> 0:21:02.760 of child journals when he was a kid, but he 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:05.680 wasn't a fully formed adult. It wasn't like a chance 0:21:05.680 --> 0:21:09.200 to experience him and a grown human, you know. And 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.639 here was this most recent thing, and she she just 0:21:12.920 --> 0:21:17.120 she didn't have it suddenly, right, So she asks Jen 0:21:18.280 --> 0:21:22.040 if Jen will part with it? Correct, She asked Jen 0:21:22.200 --> 0:21:24.640 for it. She said, I would really like to see 0:21:25.000 --> 0:21:27.600 parts of it. I understand it's about you, but and 0:21:27.760 --> 0:21:31.520 Jen kind of demurred. She hemmed an odd, and she 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:34.560 took the diary home with her. She went off to Michigan, 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.240 where she was from, and took some time by herself, 0:21:37.320 --> 0:21:39.440 and then she came back and lived with the mcle 0:21:39.560 --> 0:21:43.320 vans for about two months because she just couldn't stand 0:21:43.400 --> 0:21:46.840 being in her apartment by herself. So there were many 0:21:46.920 --> 0:21:50.919 opportunities for Helen to say, you know, I'd really like 0:21:51.040 --> 0:21:53.920 to see that diary, which was no longer there, right, 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:56.760 It was in Jen's apartment, she had taken it and 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.720 then got off to Michigan, so the diary is not there. 0:22:00.000 --> 0:22:04.240 Helen looking at this future almost daughter in law who 0:22:04.280 --> 0:22:06.960 she doesn't know very well. She hadn't spent much time 0:22:07.000 --> 0:22:11.120 in her company and asking for it and not getting 0:22:11.320 --> 0:22:14.479 the response she wants, and by the end she was begging. 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:19.080 She was simply saying, look, if Bobby is describing a tree, 0:22:19.720 --> 0:22:21.880 can you just give me the words, Just tell me 0:22:22.400 --> 0:22:25.440 what he says about the tree. I just want the words, 0:22:25.480 --> 0:22:29.320 just the words. And then still I never did it, 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:36.440 and her stay there ended in terrible tension, and with 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:40.080 Jen slamming the door behind her, bursting into tears and 0:22:40.119 --> 0:22:43.520 getting in her car and driving off. And you never 0:22:43.520 --> 0:22:48.520 saw the Macaile names again. And when I saw Helen before, 0:22:48.640 --> 0:22:51.520 you know, to do this story Jen, she couldn't come 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:54.600 up with Jenn's last name. She kept saying, it's something short, 0:22:54.880 --> 0:22:58.680 it's like Jen Cove. And I said it was Jennifer 0:22:58.720 --> 0:23:02.600 Cobb and she said that's right, cop C O B B. 0:23:02.960 --> 0:23:08.800 And I said she really had forgotten. She had buried 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:11.800 her to which she buried her son. She had just forgotten. 0:23:13.000 --> 0:23:19.000 It always really amazes me and humbles me. To think 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:24.640 about what the ways in which our memories, especially our 0:23:24.680 --> 0:23:31.200 memories under the pressure of intense emotion UM just either 0:23:32.080 --> 0:23:36.520 end up with these huge lakunai, you know, just these gaps, 0:23:36.680 --> 0:23:39.400 or tell their own stories just you know that are 0:23:39.440 --> 0:23:43.000 just different stories. And you know, one of the things 0:23:43.000 --> 0:23:46.119 that you're that you're describing now makes me think of 0:23:47.320 --> 0:23:51.040 a moment in your piece where where you you describe 0:23:51.640 --> 0:23:55.560 the yearning and searching stage of grief, right, and and 0:23:55.640 --> 0:24:00.959 so at this point Helen and Jen too are in 0:24:01.040 --> 0:24:04.199 this yearning and searching stage, and the journal has become 0:24:04.560 --> 0:24:09.080 this kind of emblematic of that more than anything else. 0:24:09.800 --> 0:24:12.000 It's a way to resurrect the dead, even though you 0:24:12.040 --> 0:24:15.119 know that they can't be resurrected, right. That's when you 0:24:15.160 --> 0:24:18.800 are just desperately searching for them though you know rationally 0:24:19.119 --> 0:24:23.480 they're never coming back. So it's a widow crying out 0:24:23.480 --> 0:24:26.000 to her husband as she's doing the dishes. They're talking 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:28.800 to him. You know, it's you can take many many forms. 0:24:29.320 --> 0:24:31.920 It was first described by a pair of British second 0:24:32.160 --> 0:24:36.040 psychiatrists UM. One of them was John Bulby, who did 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:39.280 um attachment theory. But yeah, I mean, but the real 0:24:39.840 --> 0:24:42.040 kind of author of that is a guy named Colin 0:24:42.119 --> 0:24:44.720 Murray Parks And yeah, it's perfect. And I think that 0:24:45.040 --> 0:24:49.960 Helen was stuck on that diary for like ten years. 0:24:50.040 --> 0:24:56.360 She was yearning and searching, and she really really, um 0:24:56.560 --> 0:24:59.359 got served bogged down in it. She took it to 0:24:59.400 --> 0:25:02.360 the members of her that group that I was describing 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:04.800 of women who had all lost kids. She would talk 0:25:04.840 --> 0:25:08.159 about it with them and they would joke about breaking 0:25:08.160 --> 0:25:11.639 into Jennifer's house and liberating the diary, you know, so 0:25:11.720 --> 0:25:15.240 that you could have it, stealing it. Um. She was 0:25:15.359 --> 0:25:17.680 really angry at her husband for a very long time. 0:25:17.760 --> 0:25:20.920 She would needle him about it, you know, for years, 0:25:20.960 --> 0:25:24.600 this one on. She couldn't get past it. There was 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:29.560