Kevin Sampsell | Longreads | September 26, 2023 | 23 minutes (6,342 words)

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This essay deals with suicide and suicidal ideation. If you or someone you know is suicidal, please, contact your physician, go to your local ER, or call the suicide prevention hotline in your country. In the United States, call 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.

In September 2019, I lost my close friend, Arthur, to suicide. In summer 2020, I began writing a book that centered our friendship. In May 2021, every folder and document vanished from my computer.

This mass disappearance included the unfinished book about my friend: all 39,548 words. The only evidence of it is a notebook where I tracked its growth.

I searched every nook and cyber cranny, and then spoke with Apple technicians for several hours, watching them take remote control of my cursor to dig into my hard drive, finder, cloud, trash bin, and something called the Wayback Machine. Like an amateur, I had not saved a backup of the book or even emailed it to myself. I hadn’t shared it with anyone.

Until the document’s disappearance, the words had been flowing and I was excited about how much I was getting onto the page. Not just about Arthur and the times leading up to his death, but also about my own depression and my mother’s Alzheimer’s. I was also using the book to explore bisexuality, polyamory, aging, and a 1991 book about assisted suicide called Final Exit by Derek Humphry.

I’d put it all in there—uncomfortable truths that I called autofiction in case I needed to hide from my own reality. Writing “fiction” often gave me that out. If someone said they felt seen by a novel or short story I’d written, I would confess to its real-life truth, but if someone was bothered by a detail in my “fiction,” I could just say it was invented, whether it was or not.

Other documents disappeared too. A Word doc of essays. Two hundred pages of short stories. Another novel I’d finished recently after eight years of work. But those were things I could piece together from other files and sent emails. It was the loss of the suicide-Alzheimer’s-bisexuality novel-in-progress that felt insurmountable. Something I couldn’t recreate.

The experience made writing feel futile. You could call it writer’s block, but writer’s depression is probably more accurate. In sports, they might call it “the yips,” which is when an athlete cannot perform a simple task they’ve performed thousands of times. I couldn’t open a blank document without the fear it would disappear when I closed it.

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The advice I’ve sometimes given to people about getting out of a writing rut is to write an I Remember list. It’s easy to do and sometimes helps you locate a lifeline into something bigger than one simple memory. Poet Joe Brainard famously published a beautiful book full of them in 1975.

I remember meeting Arthur in New Orleans at an art festival in 2018 and discovering that we both lived in Portland.

I remember Arthur dancing in the streets of the French Quarter and saying he found his people.

I remember a woman grinding on Arthur and how much he enjoyed the attention even though he was into men.

I remember flying back to Portland with Arthur and waiting at the baggage claim for the suitcase full of clothes he bought in New Orleans and were probably too flashy for everyday wear in Portland.

I remember seeing Arthur’s band, Milk Bandits, play a bunch of times, and his sexy voice and stage presence.

I remember spending days collaging together and taking turns playing records and music videos for each other.

I remember watching Alex Cameron videos with Arthur and how he was so into it we bought tickets to Cameron’s show at the Doug Fir in Portland on Valentine’s Day in 2019.

I remember walking to dinner with Arthur one night and he asked to borrow my coat because he was always cold. He called it my old man coat and it was too small for him, but he wore it anyway. He was four inches taller than me. I looked at him as we waited for a crosswalk light and chuckled at how scrunched over and comically awkward he looked, but he didn’t care, as long as he was warm.

I remember when we watched The Fits and how we tried to figure out the meaning of the movie. I remember my mother’s quilt over us, his head on my shoulder.

I remember telling Arthur once that I wanted a boyfriend to do manly things with and he laughed and held my hand.

I remember how he rarely called me by my first name and I wondered if it was a way for him to distance himself or a funny endearment. His messages always started, “Hey, Sampsell.”

I remember how excited he was by the way I described his band’s music. He wanted me to write it down so they could use it in their press packet. But then the band broke up.

I remember his text messages to me, explaining why he seemed gloomy one night: “I just realized, my melancholy was the mourning of my old life, before I infused joy into my passion of creating and performing and songs.” “I was sad getting used to being happy.”

This list of memories is an attempt to figure out something about my friendship with Arthur, and why it still has the lingering mystery of a failed romance. I’m also searching for clues to his depression.

I found out about his death several days after his suicide. I was at the bookstore where I work, in the breakroom, when I glanced at the newspaper and saw Arthur’s face. He was smiling, exuding the warm and eager kindness he regularly wore like a halo. My first thought was, “Oh, hey, Arthur.” But instead of a headline about his band or something else he might have done, there was just his name and under it, “1983-2019.”

I missed my bus after the bookstore closed that night and walked home, in the dark, in a daze. I looked at our last exchanges. I had asked him to go out a couple of times that month, but he said he had other plans. I realized that I didn’t know Arthur’s other friends very well. I had met some of them at his shows but didn’t have any way to get in touch with them. The last sentence of the obituary implied suicide: “Arthur struggled throughout his life with depression, which lead to his early death.” I called Arthur’s phone number to hear his voice. I left him a message. Something like, I wish you would have talked to me. How come you didn’t tell me?

The next day I looked for more about Arthur. I thought about what could have been weighing on him. He’d had a couple of boyfriends while I knew him and though he seemed disappointed after a breakup, he never seemed crushed. He’d be on dating apps shortly after, messaging new guys. Even when I first met him in New Orleans, he was excited about all the men he could meet in a new city and would show me some of the messages. He didn’t seem to lack attention. He was not only tall, fit, and perfectly cheekboned, he was also kind, smart, and open.

I wondered if being black and gay in a predominantly white city like Portland made him feel isolated. There were times when he told me stories about feeling othered in his circle of gay friends. One time, maybe four months before his death, he told me that he had been drugged and possibly assaulted by a man he knew. The man was in a circle of his friends that sometimes partied together. It seemed like the man had a lot of money, a nice house, and a lot of power in this friend group. Arthur talked to other people in this group, but they were dismissive and didn’t want to believe him. I could hear the pain in his voice, and I wasn’t sure what to say except the usual rote responses: I’m sorry that happened to you. Thanks for telling me. Do you feel the need to tell others, or maybe even go after the guy somehow? You can talk to me about this any time.

He quickly stopped talking about it, wary of feeling like a victim, though it sounded like he was deeply hurt, in many ways, by the experience. There was a sting of sadness in our silence for a few minutes, and then I sensed that he was angry—not at me, but at the fact that he had this pain inside his body, maybe stuck there for life.

The only other time I saw him angry was after his band broke up. He felt like the only one with real ambition. He was constantly setting up shows, looking to meet other musicians, and hoping to record an album. When one of his bandmates wanted to do fewer shows because of back problems, Arthur felt betrayed. I can’t remember what he said exactly, but there were a few F-bombs.

Arthur would sometimes post videos of himself on the Milk Bandits’ Instagram page. He called them the “PINK ROBE” videos. In them, he’s sitting in a room in front of a blank white wall, wearing a fluffy pink bathrobe and holding an acoustic guitar. As if recording a demo tape, he strums and slaps the guitar while singing in his memorable falsetto. His register blended the vulnerable quaver of Thom Yorke, the sexy confidence of Prince, and the growling despair of Robert Johnson. I always wondered if he recorded these at night in his bedroom, perhaps working out some ideas just before bed, maybe restraining himself a little, so he didn’t wake up his roommates.

In one of the videos, he sings “I ain’t never known my daddy, I ain’t never known that man.” The words Happy Belated Father’s Day floating over his left shoulder. In another video, a month later, the words An ode to my family’s unrequited love are on the screen, and then: It’s a daily struggle.

One thing I learned after Arthur’s death was that he grew up using the name Bobby. That was the name his mother and sister called him until they became estranged. All his friends in Portland knew him as Arthur, which was his father’s name.

Arthur had not spoken with his father in years, but he mentioned him once to me, that summer before he died. He had just lost his job as a security guard and was telling me that he might go work for his dad in California and then “disappear to France and write poetry.” I wasn’t sure what to make of these ideas. I wasn’t sure what kind of work he’d be doing with his dad. Arthur did not seem like the kind of person who came from money (or had a secret stash somewhere), but maybe his dad would help him. The France thing sounded more like a fantasy than anything else. I knew he spoke French, so maybe it was a real plan. I probably should have encouraged him more. Instead, I remember feeling puzzled and I probably asked him questions about the logistics of it. My demeanor probably discouraged him.

But now I like to imagine him in Paris, sitting at a café, drinking an espresso, his notebook open, full of notes and poetry. It’s easy to picture in my mind. He’d look perfect there.

Maybe France was just his code word for the afterlife.

In Donald Antrim’s 2021 memoir, One Friday in April: A Story of Suicide and Survival, he attempts to show a difference between depression and suicide, describing depression as “a concavity, a sloping down and a return.” He believes suicide is “a natural history, a disease process . . .  an illness with origins in trauma and isolation, in deprivation of touch, in violence and neglect, in the loss of home and belonging.”

The way Antrim disconnects depression and suicide felt confusing to me at first. He even states, “I will refer to suicide, not depression.” But the more I read into Antrim’s story, the easier it seemed to comprehend. Depression is an emotional state. Suicide is in the blood.

Though I had battled depression for nearly two decades, I did not feel it was serious enough to acknowledge or talk about with others. In my worst emotional states, I’d feel uninspired and think fleetingly about suicide. But instead of suicidal ideation, it was more like intrusive suicidal daydreaming. This kind of depression might last a few days, but it always went away before I asked for help or reached a breaking point. I never felt like I was depressed enough. Besides that, I felt a foolish pride in that I was one of the few people I knew who did not take any kind of daily medication.

After getting divorced in 2016, my depression became compounded by anxiety attacks and crying jags. By summer 2019, I knew I needed help. I spoke to one of my friends, who recommended that I talk to my doctor honestly about my emotional state. I was wary of the effects an antidepressant would have on my body but decided that Wellbutrin sounded like the best option.

A few days later, on August 7, 2019, one of my favorite songwriters, David Berman, ended his life. He was the same age as me. The new band he’d started, Purple Mountains, had just put out their first album and I had tickets to their Portland concert the following month. Of course, the show did not happen.

If you listen to the Purple Mountains album, it’s painfully apparent, in hindsight, that Berman was suffering. The lyrics, though sometimes spiked with sardonic wit, are like suicide notes: The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind. Berman sings later, Nights that won’t happen / Time we won’t spend / Time we won’t spend / With each other again / With each other again.

Wellbutrin proved to be extremely effective for me. Instead of lying in bed for as long as possible, putting off projects, and not feeling excited for anything, I would wake up and start my day quickly, surprisingly focused on chores. I moved through my days with quicker, happier intentions. My energy felt so amped that I would sometimes start to freestyle rap or belt out made-up songs while driving in my car.

I remember telling Arthur that I had started taking it, but I never had the chance to really talk about the positive influence it had on me. I know he had been on other antidepressants, but I don’t think he was taking anything when he died.

The day after I found out about Arthur’s death, I called his mother. Her phone number was listed in his obituary. I knew that Arthur had not talked to her in a long time, so I didn’t know what she’d be like. When she answered the phone, her voice warmed with gratitude. “Thank you for calling and thank you for being a friend to him,” she said.

She lived a couple of hours north, in Olympia, Washington. I asked her if I could come visit. She said I could, and I might be able to visit Arthur at the funeral home before he was cremated if I came right away. I took the next day off work and drove up.

I went to the funeral home first, where a soft-speaking man in a suit was expecting me. They had Arthur’s body on a gurney waiting for me in a private room.

I stood over my friend silently after the man left, admiring his quiet beauty, even in death. He was dressed in a sweater and dark slacks. He had penny loafers on his feet and the newsboy-style cap that he sometimes wore. I watched his chest for movement, for breath. My silence felt like a dumb dare. Who would make the first sound, the first move?

I touched Arthur’s leg. It was cold. I touched Arthur’s chest. It was cold. I stayed with him for 20 minutes and then walked out. I did not see anyone in the lobby when I left. I wondered if the man in the suit was watching me on camera. I sat in my car, in the empty parking lot, and imagined the man going back into the room with Arthur. I pictured him pushing Arthur on some wheeled contraption into an elevator and down to another room, into a refrigerated slot in a wall.

I went to Arthur’s mom’s house after that. I brought grocery store flowers and a condolence card. She welcomed me into her small house and started showing me old photos and things that Arthur had made when he was a teenager. We sat down in the living room and talked, with flowers, cards, and gifts looming all around us. I found out it had been about 10 years since Arthur and his mom had seen each other or spoken. She had met a few of Arthur’s friends in the days before my visit, so she was caught up on what was happening with his life, but she obviously wasn’t able to fill in the gaps of their disconnected years. 

Arthur’s sister came over soon after I arrived and said that she too had been estranged from Arthur. She told me she used to visit him in Portland and they would spend a day or two together, going to movies, museums, or restaurants. Then, in fall 2011, as she was driving back to Olympia, Arthur texted her and said he didn’t want her to visit anymore, and not to text him. Baffled by the message, his sister pulled off the freeway and tried to call him to see what was wrong. Her calls went unanswered, and she never heard from him again. With no memory of any kind of argument or tension that weekend, she is still confused by this sudden end to their sibling relationship.

Arthur’s mom listened sadly to her daughter’s story and then blamed  herself, suggesting that she was “probably abusive” to both of her children. She said her military career may have influenced her parenting style. Arthur’s sister shut down that line of thinking though, saying to her mom, “You were tough, but not that bad.”

I asked Arthur’s mom if he left any kind of note, and she said his phone was nearby, as well as a backpack with some clothes and his computer. She said there was one other thing and pointed to a book sitting under a magazine on the table between us.

It was a copy of Derek Humphry’s Final Exit, which became the first New York Times bestseller about suicide. At the time of its release, it stirred controversy and was considered, by detractors, as merely a manual on how to end your life. Despite (or because of) this, it has sold two million copies worldwide. It felt more familiar to me in that moment than at any time before.

Subtitled The Practicalities of Self-Deliverance and Assisted Suicide for the Dying, Final Exit has been controversial in the Right-to-Die movement for a long time. Many saw Humphry’s early organization, The National Hemlock Society, as being cult-like, while others point out the painful methods of dying specifically described in the chapter, “Bizarre Ways to Die,” which include freezing, rattlesnake bites, and ingesting household chemicals. To be fair, the author prefaces these methods as “unnecessary for the serious reader” and “truly weird.”

But reading and considering the entirety of Final Exit and watching films like 2011’s How to Die in Oregon have made me better understand why someone in an incurable predicament would want to end their life on their own terms. There is a sense of beauty, dignity, and closure to it, not to mention control.

A newer book about assisted suicide is Anita Hannig’s The Day I Die: The Untold Story of Assisted Dying in America, published in 2022. It’s a much more empathetic and humane glimpse into the personal stories of suffering people who have led otherwise satisfying lives. Hannig’s book demonstrates the evolving language around its subject matter. The word suicide is rarely used and the “assisted” aspect is sometimes referred to as “hastened,” as in to hasten someone to an ending sooner and more peacefully, than one that would be prolonged and painful.

I’m not sure what to think of depression as a reason for ending your life. Though this was Arthur’s decision, the Right-to-Die community has mixed views. It’s much harder to gain assistance for those people unless a doctor can prove that their depression or mental illness cannot be cured and is causing suffering. One Amazon customer comment about Final Exit, which could be extended to legalized assisted dying, says, “I disagree with (the) premise that only people with incurable physical diseases are allowed to end their lives. Perpetuates the notion that psychiatric disorders and mood disorders are easily treatable.”

I’m not sure if I believe in ghosts but I sometimes wonder if Arthur didn’t want me to write that book about him. I wonder if he haunted my computer so I wouldn’t publish it. Was he a ghost in the machine? Can I blame him if he took his own story back?

I think everyone who has ever walked across a high bridge has thought about what it would be like to jump from there. Even if you don’t want to think about it, you will. Look over the rail and see how far down it is, to the water, or the ground, or the traffic. The thoughts just come. The frank reality of the moment is you could end your life in seconds.

One friend of mine, an author, told me, at their lowest low, they edited their own Wikipedia page to say they were dead. They put a date in there. They didn’t engage with the world for a couple of days after that. No one noticed their Wikipedia death. They wanted to see what it felt like to be dead to the world. The following week they took the death date off their Wikipedia page and came back alive.

There is a place in Seoul, South Korea, that holds mock funerals for people suffering or close to death. Participants are led into a dim room where they sit beside a casket and write their final testaments. Then they put on burial shrouds and lie down in the coffins. The coffins are nailed shut, and the person stays for ten minutes in darkness. Then, finally, they are let out of their casket. Many of the participants say they feel a renewed appreciation for life after this.

I admit that I have ghoulish tendencies. When I hear a celebrity has died, I almost can’t wait to tell someone. But first, I need to find out how they died.

Once, when a cat that an ex and I owned died a horrible death, my ex told me that she didn’t want anyone to know how the cat died. I said, “What do we say when people ask?” She said, “People won’t ask.” I didn’t believe her at first, but she was right. No one asked. But I could tell that the question was there, whispered among friends. How did the cat die?

Now, when I talk to someone whose pet has died, I remember not to ask how, but a part of me is anxious to know. There are so many things that can kill a human or animal. I want to know what to fear.

In Miriam Toews’ 2014 novel, All My Puny Sorrows, the narrator’s sister dies by suicide. The mother later states that “the pain of letting go of grief is just as painful or even more painful than the grief itself. It means goodbye.” Toews, who is one of my very favorite writers, has said the book is autobiographical, a way to better understand the real-life grief of her sister’s suicide. Another one of Toews’s most moving books is her 2000 memoir Swing Low: A Life, which she wrote in the voice of her father, who died by suicide in 1998. It’s a remarkable feat, with Toews fully embodying her father’s depression.

As much as I hate to say it, I was the one who sold Arthur his copy of Final Exit, about three months before his death. I was working at the bookstore when I spotted him near the health section. It felt odd to see him unannounced since he usually texted me when he was coming in. I snuck up and tried to surprise him. He seemed a little annoyed, like he was in a hurry, so I offered to help him find what he was looking for. We didn’t have it in stock, and it was unusually expensive online. I saw in the description that it was something about the ethics of suicide. Arthur said it was something he wanted to read for a class, so I didn’t question its subject matter. I thought of Final Exit and asked him if he knew about it. He did not. I found a used copy of it for him on the shelf. He went to the cashier and paid less than $10 for it. I think I gave him a discount coupon. It was, at the time, probably the most forgettable 10 minutes of our friendship. His hug was quick before he went into the night.

Earlier, I mentioned the friend who edited their Wikipedia page to say they died. But I lied about that. It was me who did that.

My Wikipedia page, my death, my resurrection.

I keep in touch with Arthur’s mom. We haven’t seen each other in person the last three years, partly because of COVID, but we text each other every couple of months. I send her photos of my cat and ask how she’s doing. She routinely responds in a positive fashion, with an abundance of exclamation points and emojis, usually flowers, cats, hearts, rainbows, stars, and black praying hands and a thumbs up. She adores my cat and loves all things cute and joyful.

I tell her that I’m writing about Arthur. In my head though, I’m worried about what she might think.

I also wonder what Arthur would think of me being friends with his mom. I would like to think that if he were still alive, they would have ended their estrangement and patched things up. I like to imagine all of us having dinner together. I wish that his mom and I could sit in theater seats somewhere and watch Arthur on a stage, singing with his band. Arthur would do some kind of ridiculously slinky dance move, and his mom and I would look at each other and laugh.

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Two of my favorite albums since Arthur died have been Sarah Mary Chadwick’s Me and Ennui Are Friends, Baby and Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow. On the title track of Chadwick’s album, she sings about suicidal thoughts. She even gives the exact date of her last attempt: August 11, 2019. Midway through the song, singing with pain in her voice, over a stark piano refrain, she sings, And maybe I should chill / Out on blaming my parents / Forgivable at 25, it’s not cute at 37.

Van Etten’s album opens with the song “I Told You Everything.” The first lyrics:

Sitting at the bar, I told you everything / You said, “Holy shit, / You almost died.”

One of the first times I heard about suicide was the 1980 Queen song, “Don’t Try Suicide,” which is highlighted by a casual bassline and a catchy vocal style that almost sounds like doo-wop. Freddie Mercury sings the lines:

Don’t try suicide nobody’s worth it / Don’t try suicide / Nobody cares
Don’t try suicide / You’re just gonna hate it / Don’t try suicide / Nobody gives a damn.

Arthur’s mom once told me that she’d been listening to 528 Hz. It’s a frequency in the range of a high C note that induces testosterone production in the brain. Frequency of 528 Hz, according to various videos and claims, also has the power to transform your entire DNA, heal sore body parts, help you sleep, and treat cancer. I found a YouTube video called “528 Hz |  DREAMSCAPE for POSITIVE TRANSFORMATION.” It’s over nine hours long. I’ve listened to it while working on parts of this essay.

The computer and phone Arthur left behind do not reveal his state of mind. His sister told me they found poems, songs, and other writings on the computer, but nothing like a suicide note, or journal. They never figured out a way to get into the phone. His sister says it’s locked by a pattern password. She has ten attempts to unlock it and has tried to do so seven times. She tells me she’s afraid to attempt those last chances because the phone might lock up permanently if she gets it wrong. But she still has the phone in case she ever figures out the way into it. Or as she says, “In case of a miracle.”

I try to imagine Arthur’s thoughts on his last day. Though he had obviously been planning his death for at least six months, I wonder if he fluctuated with his decision. Don’t try suicide. Nobody’s worth it . . .

He started the day riding a bus from Portland to the coast.

I envision him looking out the bus window, the roads on Highway 26 to the coast lined with forests, then hills and cliffs, and more forests. It’s a movie only I can imagine. His face in the window, reflecting like a mirror. Was he looking for something out there? Maybe he wasn’t looking out the window at all. Maybe he was watching someone else across the aisle and wondering what their life was like. I wonder if he already felt like a ghost, like someone passing through, knowing he would wake up the next day and get in a warm shower and wash his body with the magic of soap, dry his skin, put on clean clothes, and walk somewhere to spend $10 on a coffee and pastry. Maybe he thought he was escaping, no longer in need of warm water on his body, suds in his hair and on his chest, clothes to button up around him, and the comfort of food and drink.

Maybe there is something unburdening about knowing these things are the last in your life. The last walk on the beach, the last rock you throw in the water, the last splash, the last sunset, the last stranger you see, the last song you hear, the last words you say to someone.

Arthur had checked himself into a room at the Sunset Surf Motel in Manzanita, Oregon. He said something to the front desk person about meeting friends later, but he was probably just trying to distract them, in case he was acting nervous or peculiar.

At some point that night, he took the nitrous tank that he had brought with him and sat in the bed with it. This method, using inert gases, is described in Final Exit. I would like to believe the book when it says that it’s one of the most “effective” and “painless” methods for “self-deliverance.” I would like to think that it was as simple as falling asleep. I would like to think that he was so at peace that he could possibly even dream as he was dying. Maybe dreaming of France.

I always wondered how hard it would be to make yourself disappear. You would have to shed your traceable belongings. Throw your phone away or smash it. Burn your credit cards. Ditch your car. Never commit a crime. Pray that nobody has your fingerprints.

I can’t imagine how damaged a person must become to want to disappear. Not just without a trace, but without a mark on anything or anyone.

No past for anyone to remember.

No ego.

There are around 600,000 people who go missing in the United States every year. According to National Missing and Unidentified Persons statistics, 4,400 unidentified bodies are found each year. Those numbers mean that only 0.7333% of people who go missing are found and unable to be identified.

Outside of his motel room, Arthur taped a note to the door. It said: if you don’t want to see a dead body, don’t go in.

I spoke with Arthur’s mother and sister on separate phone calls as I was finishing this essay. They still have very few clues as to why he did what he did. They both expressed lingering pain and sadness.

His mom tells me that when she attended the memorial for Arthur in Portland in November 2019, hearing his friends speak about him felt comforting. She was happy and relieved to hear that his friends loved him so much. I can imagine that talking to his friends and listening to their stories that day was bittersweet and nourishing. I was there as well, in the living room of the house of one of Arthur’s closest friends, and I remember how hard it was to speak when it was my turn. How I could barely make it through the sobbing.

Although my sadness has started to abate the past almost-four years, writing this has triggered an odd sense of frustration and even a sort of anger. There are times, sifting through the memories of our friendship, that I have wanted to throw something or scream. If you know me, you know that I am not prone to anger. I am quicker to break down in sadness than to lose my temper. The only time I ever scream is when I’m having a nightmare. Maybe I’m falling through the air, without a parachute, and I start to scream. Because the sound is coming from a dream dimension, it is usually shrill and hoarse, like a Chewbacca cry. It usually wakes me up and then I can’t help but laugh about the sound. And then I laugh at the quiet dark because I’m still alive.

Arthur’s mom and sister both go to suicide support groups. Arthur’s mom tells me that she suffers from depression and anxiety and that her own mother was schizophrenic. She tells me, more recently, that reading Mark Wolynn’s It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle has been helpful to her.

While genes and behaviors sometimes pass down in families, suicide is, in fact, not hereditary. People can, and should, and do seek help every day.

A depressed person often finds comfort in being down. I felt that in my depression. I would feel it weighing me down to a point where I basked in the gloom. I’d become a stubborn grump. It could almost become a dark perversion if I let it.

But I also knew what it felt like to be happy and satisfied and to strive for those kinds of feelings. I could seek out the dopamine like a freaking dopamine hunter! If I could simply trick myself into thinking positively and to see the pleasures in living, maybe I could find (and hold) happiness. Maybe my happiness would make others happy. Can happiness spread? Will it catch on?

At the performance that never happened, Arthur’s mom and I are seated there in the crowd, close to the front. It’s an outdoor show somewhere, with a river breeze cutting through the warm summer air. We’re watching the show, smiling, bopping our heads to the beat. Arthur’s band is not breaking up. They are writing more songs and getting ready to record an album. Arthur and I have even made a collage for the front cover.

The band are on their fourth song now, and as always happens at their shows, those in the audience that are not familiar with them are starting to pay close attention. It’s a raw, infectious funk. There’s a snarl to it, like the songs are somehow primitive. People are nudging each other and nodding to the stage, at Arthur, like, Holy shit, he’s good.

Arthur commands the stage, on the front lip of it like a balance beam. His long arms swim upward like he’s about to fly away, and when he sings, his face defines every word of his emotional lyrics. I turn my camera on and try to capture the moment. He quickly turns his head and sort of blocks his face dramatically, as if he’s suddenly shy. I can tell he knows it’s me trying to take the photos though, and I can see him trying not to laugh. It feels like both a flirt and a challenge and I take a few more photos. His impish behavior catches up with him by the end of the song and he’s cracking himself up. The band has to wait for him to stop laughing, but the crowd loves it. The audience already loves Arthur.

They start their next song and I look at the photos on my camera, expecting the blurry worst. And that’s what I get—smudges of fabric, skin, and glaring stage lights. But there is one stunning one. It looks crystal clear and perfect. I can see his sharp cheekbones and dark eyes angled upward as if watching his lean, muscular arm and outstretched hand trying to snatch a star out of the sky.

Kevin Sampsell is a writer, editor, collage artist, small press book publisher and bookseller living in Portland, Oregon. His books include I Made an Accident: Collages and Poems, the novel, This Is Between Us, and the memoir, A Common Pornography.

Editor: Krista Stevens
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands

Kevin Sampsell| Longreads | April 2019 | 11 minutes (2,777of words)

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Prince’s “Erotic City” was one of the most played songs at dance clubs in the mid-`80s. If I were with my friend, Angie, and the DJ played this infamously dirty B-side, we’d be on the floor immediately after that first sexy note — a lone string plucked and whammied, dreamlike. Prince was the bond in our friendship, one that started when we were horny teenagers and has lasted in some small way or another throughout the years. Even though we live in the same state, we don’t see each other much. I guess you’d say we’re more like Internet friends these days. We chat about parenting, old friends, or jobs. But back in the day it was pretty hot and heavy, and it seemed like the good chemistry between us was heavily influenced by our love for the one and only Prince Rogers Nelson. Which is why it felt oddly appropriate when Angie messaged me on Instagram last year to see if I wanted to go see Prince’s most popular backing band, The Revolution, at the Crystal Ballroom in Portland. “It would be a cool flashback if you wanted to go,” she wrote.

***

I have to admit, I stopped paying attention to Prince around the time he changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol (in 1993), but Angie had stayed a superfan. She interacts with people on Prince message boards, Facebook pages, Instagram accounts, and newsletters. She has a wardrobe of Prince t-shirts, tank tops, leggings, necklaces, and earrings. She saw him in concert eight times, most recently in Oakland in 2016 on his Piano and a Microphone tour, and before that, in Portland in 2013, when his backing band was the all-female group, 3rdeyegirl. He died less than two months after the Oakland show. Mournfully, she flew to Minneapolis shortly after his death to see The Revolution reunite and perform his songs at the legendary First Avenue nightclub, where scenes from “Purple Rain” take place.

I saw Prince perform only once, at (in my opinion) his creative peak, in 1988 on the Lovesexy tour. Just a year after Sign O’ The Times received rave reviews but before his oddball choice to record a whole album for a Michael Keaton Batman movie. The concert I saw was an elaborate stage show in Seattle, with a horn section, Sheila E. on drums, a seductive dancer named Cat I was obsessed with, and gratuitous stage props like a basketball hoop, a bed, a fountain, and a Ford Thunderbird. Even though The Revolution was not his band at the time, they were his band on his two best studio creations (Around the World In a Day and Parade). I guess I should say “arguably his two best” because when it comes to Prince, every other detail, achievement, and rumor concerning him and his work is argued about.

It took me just a few seconds to reply to Angie and tell her I wanted to go. I didn’t know exactly who would be singing the songs, but just the idea of seeing Wendy Melvoin, Lisa Coleman, Brown Mark (Mark Brown), Matt “Doctor” Fink, and Bobby Z. (Robert B. Rivkin) on stage together, locking into one funky groove after another — circa 1979-86 — seemed amazing enough.

***

On the night of the show, Angie and I meet for dinner and it feels totally natural and chill, even though it’s been almost 30 years since we’ve slept together. Some thoughts cross my mind as we eat pasta: Is this a date? Is she thinking about the time we had sex in her hatchback in the graveyard? Or the time we did it in a sleeping bag on the football field and called it “the human burrito?”

She looks good to me. Do I still look good to her? Could I still pull off the look I had when I was 19 — the paisley jacket, stretch pants, and dangly earrings? Am I thinking too much about the past instead of paying full attention to our conversation?

But as we eat and check the time on our phones every 10 minutes, I realize it is what it is: Two aging Gen-X folks reliving some sexy glory days and mourning an old hero, gone too soon.

I ask Angie if she remembers the day Prince died. She says she remembers hearing the first rumblings of the news on a Prince fan page saying that there were ambulances at Paisley Park, where he lived and made music. Then the news that there was a dead body. Then the news that it was Prince’s body. And then the shocked feeling that numbed her as texts and messages from friends started blowing up her phone. She said it didn’t fully hit her until her ex-husband called to check on her. That’s when she felt it crush her.

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I consider the legacy of Prince as heroic. He was like a hero, or even a superhero, complete with cape and special powers. His musical prowess, his nonstop songwriting and boosting of others, his bravery of expression, the gender-bending, and his inspiring integrity (he wasn’t part of the whole 1985 superhit, “We Are the World,” because he thought it was a bad song). The way people tossed the word “genius” at him felt legit and rare for that time. Not like the way everyone calls themselves a genius now (Hi, Kanye). There are Prince albums where he played every damn instrument. He had so many songs coming out of him he had to make up other names for himself and give out hits to people like Stevie Nicks, The Bangles, and Chaka Khan. When he started his record label, Paisley Park, most of the bands on it were essentially Prince soundalikes. I know because I bought a lot of those records. They may be obscure now but I loved albums by The Family, Jill Jones, and Taja Sevelle.

A big part of the appeal of Prince for me was also the blunt sexuality and freedom of his music. I saw his video for “Controversy” in 8th grade and knew right away that he was giving us something truly bold. His album, 1999, pushed the lascivious boundaries even more with its flawless, cool funk. Even listening to it now is shocking. His uncensored depiction of sexuality — and the questioning of it — was my first glimpse into queerness and X-rated (many parents would call them “inappropriate”) fantasies. Prince was, to many people, the musical equivalent to your first look at a porn magazine. I remember finding a bad cassette dub of the infamous Black Album after he decided not to release it because he deemed it “evil” and it became like contraband. The eight songs on the album were ultra-funky and perhaps too reactionary against critics who felt as if he had sold out to the pop-rock world. The lust in the music was overcooked and some songs swerved into negativity and dark violence (the narrator of the song “Bob George” wields a gun and threatens to “slap your ass into the middle of next week.”). As a catholic boy, I found this conflict between his dark side and his spiritual side to be a comfort.

***

Angie and I get to the show almost an hour early because she wants to get a spot in front. She knows a bunch of the other early arrivers from other Prince-related happenings, and introduces me to them. She points out one woman who was a fellow student in a one-off belly dancing class taught by Prince’s ex-wife, Mayte Garcia. I imagine a dance studio full of belly dancing women who are probably more curious about being close to the woman who gave birth to Prince’s son than they are about this kind of dance. I remember the headlines on gossip magazines about Prince and Mayte’s son, who died six days after he was born from Pfeiffer syndrome. Days after that (and before the death was known to the public), the couple gave an interview on Oprah, during which they pretended their son was still alive. It’s a jarring part of his history, and a reminder that his life was not as idyllic as many would think.

As Angie and I talk and point out the various styles of Prince gear worn by other fans, she spots her friend, Jonathan, who tells us that he has two extra wristbands for the VIP area, a less-crowded space close to stage left with its own bar. We take him up on his offer, wondering if it means we might meet the band as well. Angie is especially excited about this possibility because she has a raging crush on their legendary guitarist, Wendy Melvoin.

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It’s kind of a sad VIP area. At first it’s us and just two other people. One of them is a guy in a long cape and steampunk gear, and what looks to be a fake “all access” Prince and the Revolution sticker on his coat. He starts talking to us like we know him. He asks me if we’ve seen Terry or Jerry yet. I can’t quite understand who he’s talking about, but he’s dressed up like he’s in the band, or a band anyway. I play along and pretend like I know who he’s referring to and say, “No, I haven’t seen them.” I overhear someone close to us say they spotted drummer Bobby Z. in the bathroom. The steampunk guy says his name is “Funk Love.” He’s with a quiet woman named Kate who has a tattoo on her shoulder that says, “I’m Kate.” I try to talk to Funk, but he’s wearing sunglasses that look like goggles, and it’s disconcerting. I step over to Jonathan to get the story on the guy, but he doesn’t know him either. We speculate on the validity of his “all access” sticker and whether it’s ever really worked at a concert. Funk and Kate are talking conspiratorially behind us and I step back to see if I can hear them. In an effort to make conversation, I ask Funk if he’s a musician too and he pulls back, as if it’s an offensive question. Then he walks backwards in slow motion, sulking at me, like I’ve made a grave mistake and should know who he is.

A few minutes later, the VIP area gets a few more bodies, and the main space and balcony are mostly full, though the show isn’t sold out. Most of the people look to be the same age as me, hovering just below or above 50. Lots of graying hair, or hair colored various vivid shades in an attempt to look younger, including, of course, purple. Some of the fans in their 30s have that excited glow of adults who’ve hired a cheap babysitter for the night. Then the lights go down and the distinct intro of “Computer Blue” starts, sending everyone’s endorphins skyward.

“Wendy?”

“Yes, Lisa?”

“Is the water warm enough?”

“Yes, Lisa.”

“Shall we begin?”

“Yes, Lisa.”

And just like that: Holy shit! It’s The Revolution on stage in front of us!

The set list itself is fairly average. Since they focus on the Prince albums they played on (1999, Purple Rain, Around the World In a Day, Parade), there’s not a huge scope, or many deep cuts. Iconic albums like Sign O’ the Times and Lovesexy are not even mentioned. Apparently The New Power Generation are playing some of those songs at their recent reunion shows.

Bassist Brown Mark and Wendy take lead vocals on most of the songs, like “Raspberry Beret” and “Take Me With U.” I notice that the band seems to give center stage a wide berth, as if the empty space is reserved for Prince. I imagine a hologram of him beaming down from above, like at the 2018 Super Bowl half-time show. But that space is filled a few times during the set by guest vocalist Stokley Williams, the high energy singer for Minneapolis band, Mint Condition. I’m not sure how I feel about Williams’s presence. He’s a good dancer and confidently engages the crowd like a seasoned frontman (and at 50, he’s the youngest), but he also tilts the show toward cover band territory. Toward the end though, Dr. Fink, Bobby Z., Lisa, Wendy, and Brown Mark take turns in the solo spotlight and the focus turns back to them. It’s clear that this was Prince’s hand-chosen band for a reason.

As much of a control freak Prince was, you can’t help but wonder what he would think of all this. I mean, we’re talking about a guy who didn’t want his music available on iTunes and had any of his videos taken off YouTube as quickly as they popped up. He once sued 22 fans for $22 million for sharing recordings of his concerts. Some of the bands he put out on his label had to change their names because of contract disputes with him (The Time became The Original 7ven and The Family are now called fDeluxe). This all makes me wonder about the financial aspects of the tour and its players. A cynical music fan would assume they’re capitalizing on Prince’s death and doing it for money, but publicity for the shows hasn’t been great and the venues are mostly mid-size halls and clubs. In more recent interviews with the band on YouTube, it’s obvious that some members were fired and some quit after the Parade tour in 1986. During those final days, Prince’s behavior toward the band was strained and dismissive. During rehearsals for that tour, Prince added new players to his band and started ignoring his oldest bandmates.

The Revolution have been playing these songs again now for over two years. If the band sometimes had bad blood with their leader, it’s also very clear that they understand the vital role they performed in the history of one of our most important musical artists. It’s fully evident that they love playing the music and being with each other again.

***

I had hoped to hear some between-song anecdotes or stories about Prince during the show. I had envisioned something more like a memorial in a way — something more cathartic and raw — but each concert the band plays probably makes it easier to not dwell on the sadness of his absence and to just deliver a badass funk party. While writing this essay, I watched hours of interviews with the band, as well as other performances. One video of them performing in Minneapolis just months after Prince’s death shows just how intensely emotional their first reunion shows must have been. In it, Wendy struggles to sing the beautiful ballad, “Sometimes It Snows In April.” It’s hard to watch and not cry when Wendy sings the last lines: “Sometimes I wish that life was never ending/ But all good things, they say, never last/ And love, it isn’t love until it’s past.”

At the end of the set in Portland, over two years after his death, there is still plenty of melancholy and feelings of loss from Prince’s departure. The Revolution start playing those familiar opening chords of “Purple Rain.” It’s one of his songs that I’ve heard thousands of times and, frankly, I don’t care if I don’t hear it again for a long time. But the band plays it with the perfect blend of strength and vulnerability, and the sentiment of the words hits hard. It could almost be an apology letter to the band he disbanded at the height of their power. Wendy sings, “I never meant to cause you any sorrow/ I never meant to cause you any pain.” I see a couple near the stage, holding each other, almost slow dancing. They seem so deeply connected, and they’re crying, like the song is part of their life story. They look like normal, ordinary people that I see every day out in the world — at a grocery store or on the bus. But in this setting, with the music in the air and the room riveted to every note, they glow, and look enchanted. I remember dancing with Angie to this song way back when, but it probably wasn’t as important to us as it is for this couple. We were just kids, after all.

I keep watching this adult couple, their weeping to an ‘80s power ballad, and feel a little envious of their love. But mostly I’m grateful I get to witness it. At the end of the song, the couple slowly release each other, wipe their tears away, and smile as the band waves goodbye to everyone.

* * *

Kevin Sampsell is a writer, editor, collage artist, small press book publisher and bookseller living in Portland, Oregon. His books include the novel, This Is Between Us, and the memoir, A Common Pornography

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Kevin Sampsell | Longreads | February 2018 | 18 minutes (4,605 words)

The last time I cried about a football game was in 2009.

When I was a kid, though — oh man! The waterworks from the coiled frustration and utter heartbreak of losing a game, or ending a season with a sad thud, was often too much for me. I’m not sure what is considered normal blood pressure for junior high and high school dudes, but mine was probably pretty high.

If you’re a sports fan, you don’t need me to tell you that watching a game can elicit conflicting emotions. Some times it’s dull, others, exhilarating. It can run the gamut from mildly stressful to utterly exasperating. We tell ourselves it’s fun to watch games — whether it’s the lightning-fast college basketball Final Four, a tense knuckle-biting World Series, or even the high drama of an Olympics figure skating face-off. But is it really fun? Is watching a game, especially football with its rash of injuries and hyper-macho façade, truly enjoyable in the moment? Or do we just endure it so we can process the positive highlights later?

As a sports kid who eventually blossomed into a book nerd, I surprise a lot of people with my unflagging loyalty to a game that is often seen as barbaric, anti-intellectual, and sponsored by horrible right-wing corporations. For a long time, whenever I’d meet someone new, I wouldn’t reveal the fact that I’m a football fan right away. It was like a weird secret. I’d talk about more “intellectual” subjects: poetry, indie films, twee British music, or collage art. Often I would be looking for clues in these conversations, maybe a word or a name mentioned that would reveal that they knew what a linebacker was, or an onside kick. If I found out someone was a football fan, they would often become my new best friend, at least for a while.

I find it utterly refreshing to meet another man or woman “of arts and letters” who admires the sport like I do, and I glow inside with that feeling of camaraderie. Often though, if I slip up and admit that many of my Sundays are spent worshipping guys in full pads and helmets groping and tackling each other while rich old men tally their bank accounts in their executive suites, I am met with pained expressions and confusion. I counter that surprise by trying to illuminate my humanistic connection to the game — my love for discovering the players’ personal stories of overcoming adversity; the bonding community of fandom; the sheer unpredictable nature of all sports; and yes, indeed, the amazing beauty and skill of what these players are able to do on the field. I can still remember plays that happened decades ago and recall them as precisely as my favorite songs.

I did the math recently and figured out that I’ve been a football fan since 1975, when I chose the St. Louis Cardinals as my favorite team. Like most other 8-year-old boys, I picked my team mainly because I thought their helmet looked cool and partly because they were an exciting team to watch. Their star quarterback, Jim Hart, liked to throw long, and the team was nicknamed the “Cardiac Cards” because they won so many games in the final minute. But the Cardinals were also an underdog in a decade that saw the Dallas Cowboys, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Miami Dolphins hogging the Super Bowl limelight.

Two years later, the team started to crumble and missed the playoffs for the second straight season. Following your team was drastically different in those days. Unless your team was playing on television, you’d have to wait for score updates to come up on screen about every fifteen minutes, or wait for the halftime highlights. The TV networks hadn’t introduced the scrolling game updates across the bottom of the screen yet. Of course, there was no internet either. I had to watch whatever game was on network television and make sure I didn’t take my eyes off the screen if I wanted to know how the Cardinals were doing. This was an excruciating experience, especially for a young fanatic.

I remember one time when a Cardinals game was on and they lost on the last play. I was crushed, and my stomach felt like a hard pit of sadness. It took a few minutes to sink in before I could believe they’d lost. I fantasized that after the end-of-game TV commercials, they’d go back to the game and the referees would be announcing that there was a penalty, or that there had been something wrong with the game clock, and the last seconds would have to be replayed — and the Cardinals would actually win!

Yeah, I know — the ’70s were a long time ago. It’s been over 40 years of fandom, but let me cut to the chase and hold up one finger to show you how many times my Cardinals have been to the Super Bowl. Now, let me put that finger away to show you how many times they’ve won it. Zero. Zip. Nada.

Why am I still holding out hope for this team, you might reasonably ask. The answer to that question is an infinite mystery. Sure, I’ve enjoyed other teams, other players. But when Sunday comes around, I can’t pull my focus away from those dang red birds — even during their worst years.

Early in the 1978 season, when the Cardinals lost their first eight games, I tried being a Green Bay Packers fan. The Packers were the surprise team that year and that felt thrilling, but by the end of the season, my heart just couldn’t be torn away from my lowly Cards, who won six of their last eight games to give me just the tiniest thread of hope to hold onto until the next season (another losing campaign). Maybe all those humbling losses were the original seeds that grew into my lifelong fondness for the underdog in everything.

Most people, though, are bandwagon jumpers. They see a winning team and hop on for the ride until they start losing games. Then they’ll switch to a more successful one, and on and on that cycle goes. It’s called being a fair-weather fan and there’s no loyalty in it! Real character comes from enduring many losing seasons and then savoring the joyful moments when they do happen. In these current days of free agents switching teams every other year, and fantasy football, loyal fans seem more of a rare breed. And yes — I do see the sad irony in the fact that my Cardinals’ fandom has outlasted two marriages and many friendships in my life. Maybe some folks (me?!) love sports teams more than people. But it’s a one-sided love. I don’t think the Cardinals love me back or even know I exist.

Sometimes it’s a hometown pride kind of thing that makes someone a fan of a team. Maybe their mom or dad rooted for a specific team and that fandom transferred to them. It could also be a particular player. A girl in my high school loved the gigantic defensive lineman William “Refrigerator” Perry and on that alone became a Chicago Bears fan. For me, loving the Cardinals is some incalculable combination of a never-ending hope for the hopeless and the thought that these years of suffering will be redeemed on some unforgettable day in my life.

My early love for football was fueled by my older brother, Matt, and some of the other kids in our neighborhood. We’d play games in a big yard down the street. We called this yard “O’Hare Stadium” because the lady who lived in the house adjacent to it was named Miss O’Hare. All the neighborhood kids had their own favorite teams: the Chargers, Eagles, Vikings, and 49ers. They’d emulate their favorite players, mouthing off play-by-play commentary with their names (Joe Montana, Tony Dorsett, et al) like it was trash talk against our favorite players. To avoid injury, we’d have to take into account the water faucet in the middle of the yard (to us, it signified the 50-yard-line).

My favorite memories of that neighborhood are playing football with those kids — even the ones I didn’t like. Heck, my favorite memories of elementary school are playing football during recess.

A couple of years later, I’d go and play tackle football with my brother, Matt, and his high school friends at the park. I was definitely the smallest one there, with puberty still a few armpit hairs away, but I was fast and could usually run out of bounds before any of the bigger kids could tackle me. One of the other players on those Saturdays was Jane, the sister of one of my brother’s friends. She was fearless and tough, and played kicker and backup running back for her high school’s junior varsity team.

Sometimes I’d play quarterback, and one time Jane intercepted one of my passes and ran it back for a touchdown, stiff-arming me on the way. She was a Raiders fan.

In my spare time, I collected football cards and read The Sporting News. I even subscribed to a Cardinals newsletter, which came in the mail every week during the season and included stats, injury updates, quotes, and a scouting report about the upcoming opponent. It was usually about five pages, stapled in the upper left corner. No fussing about the design. Each week I inhaled the information and then pinned the latest report to my bedroom wall.

I kept my own notebook of stats and predictions every year. I drew cartoonish pictures of some of the players — their jerseys and their helmets. I was not talented at this and often created lopsided-looking sketches of guys whose hands were much too large or whose legs were oddly proportioned. My helmet-drawing skills were pretty good though. The Cardinals logo has only changed slightly in all these years. One year, after they moved to Phoenix and became the Arizona Cardinals, they made the bird head look faster and sleeker (less round) and turned the expression on the beak into a meaner-looking frown. I colored these drawings in with crayons and markers.

I even ordered — through the mail — an album of the instrumental music that was played during football highlights on “Monday Night Football.” I’m listening to it now, as I write this, and nothing has ever matched the drama and thrust of Johnny Pearson’s two-minute masterpiece, “Heavy Action.”

Matt and I were the only ones in our family who seemed to appreciate the nuances and intensity of football. We’d often watch games with the volume down and pretend we were the announcers. He was a Howard Cosell fan. I was a Brent Musburger fan (I always loved the way he started his Sunday pre-game shows with “You’re looking live at…”). We both loved “Dandy Don” Meredith. (“Turn out the lights. The party’s oveeeer.”)

Even in the off-season, Matt and I would play those funny games you could find at toy stores, like the one where the little football players buzzed randomly around a magnetized field that vibrated, or the Super Toe game, where you smacked the plastic kicker guy on the head, which made him kick a little football through some plastic goalposts. There was also the handheld electronic game from Mattel, which was thrilling at the time, even though it was about the same level of quality as the first Pong games. And of course, there was the school cafeteria game where you folded up a piece of notebook paper into a triangle and flicked it around a table, scoring points by getting a corner of “the ball” over the table’s edge or flicking it through the air for a field goal.

All of these things — the playing, the analyzing, and dreaming of the sport — are probably the reasons I still obsess over football and get lured into its drama year after year.

People see a different side of me when I watch football. Normally, I’m unassuming, mellow, and quiet. But during a game, I might stomp around and clap like a coach on the sideline. I may shout at the television, throw my hands up in frustration, swear under my breath, tense up during a big play, bounce my leg nervously, high-five a stranger, or let out a loud “Whoop!”

One time, I watched a playoff game with a journalist who was doing a story about me and one of my books. He followed me around for a couple of days, asking me about my path to becoming a writer, my literary influences, and the roles I play in the literary community in Portland, Oregon, where I live. When the story appeared a couple of weeks later, it covered all those things for sure. But it also noted how, in the time he spent with me in the sports bar to watch the game, I showed “an animation in rooting for his team I’d never seen in him before.” I laughed when I read that part of his story, knowing that the reporter probably witnessed my most passionate self in that TV screen-filled sports bar.

On February 1st, 2009, I had a Super Bowl party at my house with about a dozen friends. The game capped off an amazing playoff run by the Cardinals, who some had regarded as the worst team in the playoffs that year. With surprising precision, and with Kurt Warner at quarterback, the team’s high-powered offense plowed through three contenders on their way to the big game. Their legendary wide receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, who has played his entire career for the team, was especially on fire with five touchdowns in the previous three games. They were playing the Steelers, a franchise that is no stranger to championships. This was the first and only time in my life that the Cardinals have been in the Super Bowl. Matt was living in Houston then and hosting a sports radio show. He had me call in as a guest and we talked about this long-awaited chance for the Cardinals to finally win it all. To be honest, it was like a dream come true to be on a radio show talking sports, especially with my team being unexpectedly in the national spotlight. Matt’s favorite team his whole life, by the way, has been the New England Patriots. They’ve won five Super Bowls since 2001. This gaudy accomplishment makes me jealous and sick to my stomach. But at least he doesn’t like the Steelers.

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After a shaky first half and the halftime show featuring Bruce Springsteen, my Cardinals started to chip away at the Steelers’ lead and their defense toughened up. Though they were trailing 20-7 going into the fourth quarter, a Larry Fitzgerald touchdown and a safety soon made the score 20-16 with just under three minutes left in the game. The Cardinals had the ball and some momentum, but time was running out.

That’s when it happened.

Kurt Warner threw a short pass across the middle of the field to Fitzgerald in full stride, with a defender trailing at his heels. A small seam opened up as Fitzgerald’s powerful stride turned upfield, avoiding three defenders. Everyone at my Super Bowl party suddenly stood up and started shouting. I was leaning toward the giant TV, yelling, “Go, Larry! Go, Larry!” Fitzgerald, who had been dominating every game of the playoffs that year, put on the jets and sprinted into the end zone. Play-by-play announcer Al Michaels counted down as Fitzgerald ran: “Thirty, twenty, ten. Arizona has the lead!” It was a beautiful play, and after a game full of struggles, the Cardinals were ahead for the first time. I was jumping all over the place, hugging friends and clapping like a maniac.

You know how they show the team owners and managers up in their executive box seats during the games, and when there’s a huge game-changing play, everyone is hugging and smiling and celebrating as victory becomes imminent? That’s what I probably looked like. And to be honest, that’s how I felt too. Thirty-four years of loyalty, time, energy, and fantasizing were about to pay off. My team was at the top of the mountain. I watched Fitzgerald, in his iconic #11 red jersey and long dreads, celebrating with his teammates on the sidelines. In just his fifth year in the league, he was already elite, on and off the field. Larry Fitzgerald is a beautiful man, seemingly superhero-esque, and has now played every year of his record-setting 14-year career with the Cardinals, a rare feat for anyone in the league. He is my favorite Cardinal of all time and seeing him slice through the Steelers’ defense untouched on that touchdown is still one of the most adrenaline-fueled moments of my life. When you watch the replay you can even see the camera subtly shaking as the crowd’s decibel level increases.

One of my friends — a Seahawks fan — rushed out of my party after this play and ran down the street to a sports bar that catered to Steelers fans, so he could see what their reaction was. It was less than a block away and packed for the game. When he came back, he said the place was filled with a stunned silence and he shouted out “Cardinaaaaaaaals!” before sprinting back.

An exhilarated buzz filled the air at this party — my friends smiling, my Cardinals celebrating, my long-awaited championship drought minutes away from finally ending. It was as memorable as the time when I was 12 and the 1980 US olympic hockey team shockingly upset the Soviet Union in the semis. Amazingly, it was Al Michaels who also announced that game and gave us the legendary line “Do you believe in miracles? Yes!” as the game ended and the Americans celebrated their scrappy victory. It was as memorable as when the US women’s soccer team won the 1999 World Cup on Brandi Chastain’s famous penalty kick and whipped her jersey off in celebration.

But there was still two minutes and thirty-seven seconds left in the game. And I knew that was a problem.

The Steelers’ offense, led by that dislikable lug named Ben Roethlisberger at quarterback, clawed their way downfield, turning plays that should have been defensive highlights for the Cardinals into unlikely gains for the elusive Steelers’ wide receivers. Just two minutes later, the Steelers scored a touchdown on a questionable sideline catch by Santonio Holmes — a catch that works as a prime example of the saying that “football is a game of inches.” With only a few seconds left in the game, the Cardinals didn’t have time to answer and the Steelers won their sixth Super Bowl.

I can remember the end of this game vividly. The crash of disappointment, the lingering doubt of Santonio Holmes’ catch, the feelings of what-if this play didn’t happen/what-if that play didn’t happen. My friends hugged me or shook my hand on their way out, as if we had just played the game ourselves. They were sad for me and any sort of “wait until next year” cliché felt more useless than ever. I knew this might have been my one chance to feel like a champion. And maybe more importantly, I felt sad for the Cardinals’ players, who had given us fans so much in their careers, only to fall short of that ultimate goal of the sport: the Vince Lombardi trophy and a Super Bowl ring. As the ever-quotable Bruce Arians (the Cardinals’ coach a few year later) would say: “As far as goals, we have one: puttin’ a fuckin’ ring on our finger.”

That night was the last time I cried over football. For weeks afterward, I rewound parts of the game in my head, imaging players finishing plays differently and revising a speculative (happier) outcome, as if I were re-editing a movie or a short story. Who am I kidding? I’ve been doing these things in my head now for years. It’s like when you re-imagine a turning point in your life: what if I would have driven down that other street instead? What if I would have said yes to that job? What would have happened if I never went on that date? Would my life be better if I had moved to that one city?

Football (any sport really) is filled with unanswered questions. That’s part of the reason I love it. It’s an unfolding story that doesn’t always end happily. It’s more real than reality television. It can be more dramatic than a soap opera. Sadder than a breakup album. Funnier than stand up comedy. More heart-pounding than a carnival ride. Sometimes, when it’s not football season, I get antsy for its return. This past July, I was visiting the small town in Washington where I grew up and I noticed that there was a semi-pro summer league football game being played at my old high school. Inspired by my craving for live football, plus the novelty of seeing a game at the stadium where I’d nervously held hands with my first girlfriend, I paid the $10 to see the Tri-City Rage battle the South Sound Nighthawks. Unfortunately, the game was kind of bad. The players dropped passes, fell down on defense, and just looked, well, amateur. It reminded me of taking my son to the park when he was in middle school, teaching him about the game, and making him run some plays with me. After he caught the ball, I’d pretend I was a linebacker and chase him down. But I couldn’t quite tackle him because I was trying to make him feel like the next Walter Payton.

The last time I’d been to an NFL game was several years before, when I had to brave a stadium full of Seahawks fans just to watch my Cardinals get clobbered. Matt was with me at that game and announced to the surrounding spectators that I was a Cardinals fan. I had to endure their good-natured heckling and funny looks the whole game.

Sometimes people will ask me if I’m from St. Louis or Arizona. They’ll look puzzled, as if they’ve never met a Cardinals fan before. I’ll say something about how I’ve simply liked them since I was a kid…and yeah, I thought their helmet was cool. They’ll look confused still, and I’ll have to reassure them, “They were good when I started liking them!”

Before this past season started, I decided to splurge and buy a ticket for a Cardinals home game in Glendale, Arizona. I picked the December 3rd matchup against the Los Angeles Rams because I thought it would be an important game late in the season, and because it would be a nice warm break from dreary, gray Portland in December. I took the flight down by myself and rented a car at the airport. Having a weekend of solitude in a place where I barely know anyone was refreshing. I drove through the desert and enjoyed a different landscape and got excited for the game at the University of Phoenix Stadium, a structure that looks like a toaster disguised as a spaceship. It was a good trip to think about all the stuff you ponder when you’re far from home and alone — life, love, nostalgia, joys, regrets, hotel swimming pools, southwestern bar food, and football. This essay, for instance, has been on my mental “things I want to write about” list ever since that heartbreaking Super Bowl loss. I could sense myself getting closer to actually writing it. Closer to revealing this sorta-secret life-long jock-ish love of mine.

At the game, I was finally among the people I could yell and cheer alongside, and talk Cardinals philosophy with. And even though the Cards had been suffering through a disappointing injury-filled season, it was still a joy to see them play and especially to see my hero Larry Fitzgerald and to breathe the same stadium air as him. He even scored a touchdown.

I looked through the game program during a time-out and saw that at halftime there was going to be a special “Ring of Honor” ceremony. Most teams have a similar thing in their stadiums as well — a place where their all-time best players and coaches from the past are immortalized with their name permanently on display. Joining the sixteen other names in this special display of gratitude was to be none other than Jim Hart, the longtime Cardinals quarterback who’d played a big part in making me fall in love with the team in the first place. I pointed this out to the stranger sitting next to me and told him that Hart had been the star of the team when I first started liking them in the ’70s. The man kind of shrugged and said he didn’t remember him. Jim Hart was before his time.

At halftime, while many left their seats to go wander around the stadium, get food, or go to the bathroom, a small area on the field with a podium and microphone was set up. A highlight reel of Hart’s career was played on the stadium big screens and testimonials from former teammates were blended into the grainy footage. Afterward, Hart, who played for the Cardinals for 18 seasons and still holds many of the team’s passing records, was introduced by the team president to a polite ovation from those still paying attention. The 73-year-old ex-quarterback thanked fans, friends, and family and then his name was unveiled in the rafters. It seemed a lucky coincidence that I was there to see this happen. More highlights played as people started to take their seats again. Even though it had been decades since I’d seen many of these highlights, I could still remember some of them. The stadium started to come alive again after a lull. It was like some of the spectators were thinking, Whoa, this guy was good back in his day!

When the second half started, I got out of my seat and walked around the stadium. I saw all the fans having fun, especially the kids in their jerseys and their homemade signs. I thought about how they’d get older and get to see so many different Cardinals players and how those players would bring them happiness and sadness in their lives. A full spectrum of emotions. I hoped those fans wouldn’t have to wait as long as I have for the thrill of a championship.

It felt magical and surreal to be there in that crazy stadium. I went back to my seat and texted with Matt and told him what section I was in and that I got to see Jim Hart. He texted back and said he was watching the game on TV in Seattle. I actually started to feel kind of lonely there at the game, by myself. I took a bunch of photos of stuff around the stadium and tried to get some action shots of the game, but they didn’t look very good so I deleted them. But that’s okay. Sometimes memories serve us better than photos. Sometimes memories connect us to the thing in a deeper, more meaningful way.

And oh, as far as how the game went? It was fantastic. But the Cardinals lost.

Kevin Sampsell is a writer, editor, artist, small press book publisher and bookseller living in Portland, Oregon. His books include the novel, This Is Between Us, and the memoir, A Common Pornography (which also mentions his love of the Cardinals).

Editor: Sari Botton

Kevin Sampsell | Longreads | August 2017 | 15 minutes (3,752 words)

Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, just as I’m getting ready to say goodbye, she slips in an abrupt update about her parents — my grandparents. Sometimes they’re in Switzerland. Sometimes they’re in Loma, Montana. Sometimes they’ve gotten “mixed up with bad people.” Sometimes they’ve completely disappeared or died mysteriously. Sometimes it sounds like a government conspiracy — a murder plot. At first, I didn’t know what to say in return. I’d ask how they died or what they were doing in Switzerland. In more recent conversations, I tried to place her back in reality. I’d say, “Mom, your parents have been dead for forty years.” I’d ask her how old they were and she would say 60, 70, or 75. She’s not sure. She says that all the time: I’m not sure. “How old are you?” I ask, and she laughs and says, “Oh, I think I’m about 25.” Once she said she was 18. She’s actually 88 years old.

For about two years now, my mother has been fighting with Alzheimer’s and the dementia that comes from that disease. She’s had years of struggle with diabetes and epilepsy — but her mental condition was always sharp. A lifelong democrat and the mother of six, Patsy loved sewing, making quilts, reading mystery novels, and watching Seattle Mariners baseball while enjoying a Pepsi (never Coke). I am her youngest son.

In 2015, she fell off a street curb and hit her head. She didn’t tell me about this until a week later. She prefaced the story of this accident by insisting that she was fine and only suffered some scrapes on her face and arm. I asked if she went to the hospital to make sure she didn’t break any bones or have a concussion. She said my brother, Mark, her main caregiver, took her to the emergency room but she left when they wanted to do some tests on her. She has long believed that doctors were just trying to take her money — which she has very little of anyway. I tried to chide her for not staying for the tests, for some kind of care, but she was stubborn and said it wasn’t necessary.

It wasn’t long after this that I noticed her becoming more forgetful, more confused, more dark. I began to suspect that she had Alzheimer’s or dementia and read that they are both often triggered by head injuries. Though we don’t live very far apart — her in Olympia, Washington and me 100 miles south, in Portland — I only get to see my mom a handful of times every year.

On these recent visits, she often doesn’t know who I am. I can tell by the searching look in her eyes, like she is trying to place me. I attempt to engage her in some kind of conversation that will help her remember, but she eventually shuts me out as if I have exhausted her. She pretends she can’t hear me. She becomes agitated. We both end up discouraged, sitting in silence. And then the TV comes on and time slips away from us until it’s time to sleep.

In 2015, my mother fell off a street curb and hit her head. It wasn’t long after this that I noticed her becoming more forgetful, more confused, more dark.

At night, when I stay over, I sleep on the couch. Her apartment, in a seniors’ facility, is small. The couch I sleep on is in the living room area between the two tiny bedrooms — Mark’s on one side and my mom’s on the other. It’s not unusual for my mom to wake up in the middle of the night when I’m there; as if she senses that someone else is sleeping nearby. Like in some weird horror movie, I’ll wake up and see my mom standing quietly nearby, watching me and puzzling over who I am. Maybe she thinks she’s dreaming. Last year, when I visited at Christmas, she seemed more uncomfortable than usual when she woke me this way.

“Hi, mom. Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Where does that go to?” she said, pointing to the door.

“It goes to the hallway,” I said, and thinking that she may be uncertain, I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk with me. It was freezing outside, but the hallways in her building form an easy square to walk around, as long as she doesn’t stray and go out one of the exit doors. She often walks laps out there, scuffing the brown carpet with her slow slippers. I pulled my pants on and walked around the hallway with her, hoping it would make her tired enough to eventually sleep. It was about two in the morning. When we returned to her room, she started looking out the windows, slipping her spotted, papery hands into the blinds and opening them to peer out. Her vision is so bad she probably couldn’t detect anything. “What’s out there?” she asked.

“It’s too dark and cold to go out there,” I said.

She kept looking, as if she was trying to piece something together. There were a couple of streetlights in front of her building, shining dim spotlights on a few cars parked by the sidewalk. A truck drove by, slicing through the quiet night with one headlight. “There’s someone,” she said, excitedly.

I helped her get back in bed, under her covers, but she got back up fifteen minutes later, just as I was falling asleep again. She seemed to be under the impression that we were somewhere else entirely, and that we would have to get up and move on soon, like we were drifters. She said, “I was trying to decide if I should try to sleep or what. Someone might come in and see me lying here and have a fit.” This is a common thread in her daily life — feeling like she’s not really home. She’s lived here for two years though. Before that, she lived in two other homes in Olympia — both bigger houses — for about two years each, and before that in Kennewick, Washington, where I grew up. But even Kennewick is a hazy memory to her now, though she lived there for over fifty years. When she mentions “home” she usually means her childhood home in Loma, Montana, a shrinking town where fewer than 100 people live in the middle of that giant state. She often says to me, “I’m not really sure how much longer we’ll be staying here.”

I’ve read articles about Alzheimer’s and spoken to other people who have been around it. I’m trying to understand it, to see if it can be fixed somehow. I wonder if there are tricks you can do to make people remember things, to bring them back to their current life. I read the book, The 36-Hour Day, by Nancy Mace and Peter Rabins, which is an important and helpful book on the disease. I started to record some of the conversations with my mom and then listen to them to see if I can figure out where her mind is going. At best, she is simply melancholic. Much of the time though, she’s panicked.

On recent visits, she often doesn’t know who I am. I can tell by the searching look in her eyes, like she is trying to place me.

On this late December night, I talked to her and tried to uncover what kind of thoughts she was having. I imagined her despair was like a swirl inside her head. “I don’t have anywhere to go anymore, because apparently the folks have given up the house,” she said, her mind back in a place where her parents are still alive, but in some kind of trouble. “I just hope that everything’s going to be all right. It just seems like we’ve had bad luck for months. It’s about time it’s changed,” she said, with a small sliver of hope. I told her everything was fine and she just needed some sleep. “This is your home and you can sleep here as much as you want.” I held her hand and told her I loved her.

We were not an affectionate, touching family that communicated love very often when I was growing up and this physical touch, the soft brushing of my fingers on her hands and arms, is something that still feels a bit unnatural to me. She seemed almost comforted for a moment though. “I love you too,” she said, and made a sound that came out like a laugh, but with a pained kind of sharpness to it. She wore a confused expression as she said it. Was it that she was so unused to saying those words? Was it that she’d wanted to say the words to someone, but because of her forgetfulness, was never really sure who she was saying them to? “I love everybody as far as I know and if I said I didn’t I was probably mad at you,” she said, laughing a little more, like whatever had been hurting her had stopped. It was nice to hear this — the kind of thing she’d say 10, 20, or 30 years before. A sweet nugget of warmth, with a small winking reservation. She had always showed that she loved us, but it was never an outpouring. She was slow and careful with her heart.

“One of these days, hopefully, we can forget all this and start living again,” she said, as if Alzheimer’s is something you can come back from. As far as I can tell, it’s not, but I just nodded my head. I realize I could be anyone to her — her brother, her father, her son, or maybe an old friend. Sometimes, people with Alzheimer’s can’t remember who you are but they recognize body language and will feel at ease if your demeanor is familiar and friendly. “I love you so much and I feel bad about picking on you and hoping you’ll do something for me once in a while,” she said. Maybe she thought I was Mark. I can’t imagine what he’s gone through, day after day, taking care of her. He was also the caregiver for our dad, when his health was breaking down. He died in 2008.

I told her again that I love her and that she’s not picking on anyone. I didn’t want her to feel bad, or like a burden; I think she often feels like a burden. She seemed exhausted, finally relaxing into her pillow but still talking. “Anyway, I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do for me. I just feel terrible about everything. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m going to have to move someplace else and just start all over.” She started circling back to that same trope — this desire to “go home.” Then her voice got dark and low. “As time goes by, I might get desperate enough and shoot myself.”

The bluntness jarred me and I wasn’t sure how to respond for a few seconds. “You shouldn’t talk like that,” I said. It was late. I was tired. I was trying not to cry.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” she continued. “But sometimes I have thought about suicide.” Her voice trailed off a little at the end, as if she was trying to think of something else, or remember where she was.

“No, you’re not going to do that,” I said. It almost felt as if she was testing me and I found myself feeling impatient. We stayed like that, her under her blankets, me sitting on the side of her bed. On her walls around us were old photos of various family members — cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers. I was in many of the photos, but with old girlfriends, an ex-wife. One photo was of my niece and her ex-husband. This array of photos was probably at least ten years out of date. I made a mental note that her photos should be updated, but then I wondered if that would be a good idea. Maybe it would be confusing.

After a silent minute, she looked at me, as if noticing me for the first time. “That man was so nice to me though,” she said. “That man that was just here. I think he went out the front door. I was trying to help him too because he kind of acted like he needed help. He was the person who told me to lie down here.”

“That was me, Mom,” I told her.

“Well, maybe so,” she answered. “I don’t really pay much attention to who’s who or who I’m talking to or what I’m saying.”

I asked her if she knew my name.

“Your name is Joe,” she said, and then started laughing like it was a joke. But she could tell I was still waiting for an answer. “Dwayne, wasn’t it?” I tried to give her a hint and told her it was a name in the family. She couldn’t remember, so I said Kevin, and she said “Oh? Okay,” as if surprised. I asked her, “Who is Kevin?” She answered, “I don’t know. I really don’t remember. That was probably a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

I’ve read articles about Alzheimer’s and spoken to other people who have been around it. I’m trying to understand it, to see if it can be fixed somehow.

I tested her with other names and asked if she knows Matt and she remembered him quicker. I asked who he is and she said, “Matt’s my son.”

Then I said the names of her other two sons. First, she had to think about Russell for a while before saying he was “not my son, but my something or other.” What about Gary, I ask her. “Gary is just Gary,” she said, and then explained further, “Gary is just a common name.”

I asked about Elinda, the daughter she gave birth to when she was seventeen and (after a youth in mental hospitals and a life of various struggles) had died just a year before. I wondered if Elinda’s absence might be a source of confusion for her, but she said quickly and correctly, “Elinda was my daughter.”

When I said my name again, she said, “I can’t place Kevin with anything.”

She tried to sit up again, turning to look out the window. She was very curious or concerned about what was outside. I told her that nobody was out there. Everyone was inside their homes, sleeping. I had my hands on her shoulders, partly to calm her, and partly to keep her in bed. I felt like I was starting to come down with a cold and desperately wanted to go back to sleep. We had been up for an hour and my phone was on her bed, recording our conversation. “I like to think of myself of not being afraid of things but I am afraid of things,” she said then. “A lot of my problem is that I don’t like people to dislike me. So I try to be overly friendly sometimes to somebody.” I told her I was the same way, and that there was nothing wrong with being overly nice.

“I left my folks the other day,” she said. “Instead of trying to cooperate, I just got tired with them and left. Then I started feeling sorry for myself. I think I should be sent to school or something and taught how to do something.”

I can tell that her relationship with her parents is something she never felt closure with. She became pregnant in 1946, around the time she was turning 17, and even though she married the father, it was still embarrassing to her parents and they were barely in her life after that. I don’t remember them being talked about at all, even in my childhood.

While doing some internet research recently, I learned that my mom’s father died nine years before I was born, and her mother passed when I was five.

“I think they do a lot,” Mom said, speaking of them in present tense. “They expect too much sometimes, and I tried to be what they wanted me to be, but I couldn’t. When I was younger I had more insight on myself, but now I think I’d be a better person if I was married and had a husband with me all the time.” Hearing my mom voice such an old-fashioned thought made me wonder what year she was stuck in, and if that was why she married my dad.

Earlier in the day, Mom, Mark, my brother Matt, and I went out for lunch and when we returned, she became distraught. “Where did everyone go?” she said. We’ve become so used to this way of thought, we knew right away that she meant us when she said “everyone.”

In the ninety minutes between the time when we left for lunch and the time we came back, Mom had seemingly transposed our 1 o’clock bodies in her mind with entirely different people. At 2:30 in the afternoon, we were suddenly other, possibly unknown bodies to her. It almost makes you feel like you’re in a science-fiction movie. Imagine a scene where a mother is with three people in her home. Then a scene where they all get in a car and drive to lunch. Then a scene of the four of them, having lunch at a pizza restaurant buffet. Then cut to them as they return home, opening the apartment door, the mother confused, exclaiming, “Where did everyone go?” In these four scenes, the mother is played by the same actress, but there are different actors playing the other three people in each scene.

This is a common thread in her daily life — feeling like she’s not really home. When she mentions ‘home’ she usually means her childhood home in Loma, Montana.

“They should have left a note or something,” she said. She was suddenly angry, flustered. “I think it’s so rude when people do that.” She was standing in the middle of the room, her hands in front of her, palms up, like she was at a loss for words. She looked around the small apartment, as if this “everyone” were just hiding from her. It’s like the “face blindness” condition, prosopagnosia, but instead of just faces, it’s whole bodies, whole memories.

“We’re all here,” I told Mom. “There was no one else. It’s just been us today.” But she ignored my words and several more minutes of distress followed. She repeated the question, “Where did everyone go?” a few more times. Finally, Matt wrote a note on a scrap of paper and presented it to her. We’ll be back to visit soon, it said. It may seem cruel to play this kind of trick, but Mom’s mind does not work in a reasonably linear way, and we often find ourselves doing anything to make her feel safest.

I’ve tried to see if she is better in the morning, calling her on the phone as I make my breakfast in Portland. Maybe she’ll remember me. Maybe her memory is more reachable early in the day. Perhaps it’s still there when her body is rested, and it simply dwindles as the afternoons turn to night. I imagine Alzheimer’s is like a Polaroid photo in reverse — a posed family, smiling before, then fading into a milky white slab of nothing.

She usually does seem more present on the phone during the day, asking when I’ll come visit, although I’ve become unsure if she knows who I am when she’s asking me this. When I do visit though, she shuts off and doesn’t know what to do. Her Alzheimer’s makes her lose track of time and reality. She speaks of her parents in the present tense. She thinks they’re missing. She talks about how she wants to move back to Montana. She talks about it like there are people she knows there. But she doesn’t really know anyone. My mom was never social. I never remember her having friends. Surely, she must have had some. Maybe some people she worked with, when she had a job 30 or so years ago.

I think about what she’s lived through. Looking at her now, this slightly-crouched old lady with mussed-up white hair, it’s easy to forget that much of her life was a mixture of strength, forgiveness, and rebellion.

She can’t see well. She can’t hear well. The activities that brought her joy for so long — reading and quilting — are not physically possible for her anymore. All of her siblings and the family members she was closest to have passed away. I find a lot of this information about deceased relatives on a website called findagrave.com. I imagine that she feels like her life is a boring kind of hell.

I think about what she’s lived through — the teen pregnancy, three husbands, the abuses she endured from them, the daughter who was sent away for shock treatments, a boyfriend from Africa who disappeared, the family members that shunned her when she had a black baby in 1963, four years before I was born. Looking at her now, this slightly-crouched old lady with the cane and the mussed-up white hair, it’s easy to forget that much of her life was a mixture of strength, forgiveness, and rebellion.

Sometimes I wonder if this will happen to me too. Studies say that the disease is rarely passed down, but there are times when I find myself concentrating so hard on something that my memory totally freezes and stops working. I understand that’s not Alzheimer’s, but I wonder what the future holds for my memories.

Almost every day, I look out the back window in the house I live in as I wait for my coffee to heat up. I scan the backyard — the stump of the big tree that was cut down after the winter storm, the patches of grass, the tall wood fences, the birdhouse hanging high and alone off the back of the neighbor’s barn, the Japanese maple tree, the cherry trees, and the birdbath full of flickering silver water. I think back to my childhood home, in Kennewick. I would look out the window of our home and spy on my mom on Easter, as she hid Easter eggs in our yard. It was the same yard where my brothers and I would play football with the other neighborhood kids. I remember the kids’ names: Willie, Todd, Darren, Brian. I wonder if I’ll always be able to remember these things.

My mom had a life before Alzheimer’s and she was able to hold onto her memories, good and bad. I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be here on this earth, in her body, trapped in the cul-de-sac of her mental decay. It will be a moment of mercy and peace when she does breathe her last breath. These last few years of chaos for her will eventually be forgotten and we, her remaining family, will hold onto the long life of love and strength that she lived before it faded to nothing.

* * *

Kevin Sampsell is a writer, editor, and bookseller living in Portland, Oregon. His books include the novel, This Is Between Us, and the memoir, A Common Pornography.

Editor: Sari Botton

Kevin Sampsell | Longreads | August 2017 | 15 minutes (3,752 words)

Every time I talk to my mom on the phone, just as I’m getting ready to say goodbye, she slips in an abrupt update about her parents — my grandparents. Sometimes they’re in Switzerland. Sometimes they’re in Loma, Montana. Sometimes they’ve gotten “mixed up with bad people.” Sometimes they’ve completely disappeared or died mysteriously. Sometimes it sounds like a government conspiracy — a murder plot. At first, I didn’t know what to say in return. I’d ask how they died or what they were doing in Switzerland. In more recent conversations, I tried to place her back in reality. I’d say, “Mom, your parents have been dead for forty years.” I’d ask her how old they were and she would say 60, 70, or 75. She’s not sure. She says that all the time: I’m not sure. “How old are you?” I ask, and she laughs and says, “Oh, I think I’m about 25.” Once she said she was 18. She’s actually 88 years old.

For about two years now, my mother has been fighting with Alzheimer’s and the dementia that comes from that disease. She’s had years of struggle with diabetes and epilepsy — but her mental condition was always sharp. A lifelong democrat and the mother of six, Patsy loved sewing, making quilts, reading mystery novels, and watching Seattle Mariners baseball while enjoying a Pepsi (never Coke). I am her youngest son.

In 2015, she fell off a street curb and hit her head. She didn’t tell me about this until a week later. She prefaced the story of this accident by insisting that she was fine and only suffered some scrapes on her face and arm. I asked if she went to the hospital to make sure she didn’t break any bones or have a concussion. She said my brother, Mark, her main caregiver, took her to the emergency room but she left when they wanted to do some tests on her. She has long believed that doctors were just trying to take her money — which she has very little of anyway. I tried to chide her for not staying for the tests, for some kind of care, but she was stubborn and said it wasn’t necessary.

It wasn’t long after this that I noticed her becoming more forgetful, more confused, more dark. I began to suspect that she had Alzheimer’s or dementia and read that they are both often triggered by head injuries. Though we don’t live very far apart — her in Olympia, Washington and me 100 miles south, in Portland — I only get to see my mom a handful of times every year.

On these recent visits, she often doesn’t know who I am. I can tell by the searching look in her eyes, like she is trying to place me. I attempt to engage her in some kind of conversation that will help her remember, but she eventually shuts me out as if I have exhausted her. She pretends she can’t hear me. She becomes agitated. We both end up discouraged, sitting in silence. And then the TV comes on and time slips away from us until it’s time to sleep.

In 2015, my mother fell off a street curb and hit her head. It wasn’t long after this that I noticed her becoming more forgetful, more confused, more dark.

At night, when I stay over, I sleep on the couch. Her apartment, in a seniors’ facility, is small. The couch I sleep on is in the living room area between the two tiny bedrooms — Mark’s on one side and my mom’s on the other. It’s not unusual for my mom to wake up in the middle of the night when I’m there; as if she senses that someone else is sleeping nearby. Like in some weird horror movie, I’ll wake up and see my mom standing quietly nearby, watching me and puzzling over who I am. Maybe she thinks she’s dreaming. Last year, when I visited at Christmas, she seemed more uncomfortable than usual when she woke me this way.

“Hi, mom. Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Where does that go to?” she said, pointing to the door.

“It goes to the hallway,” I said, and thinking that she may be uncertain, I asked her if she wanted to go for a walk with me. It was freezing outside, but the hallways in her building form an easy square to walk around, as long as she doesn’t stray and go out one of the exit doors. She often walks laps out there, scuffing the brown carpet with her slow slippers. I pulled my pants on and walked around the hallway with her, hoping it would make her tired enough to eventually sleep. It was about two in the morning. When we returned to her room, she started looking out the windows, slipping her spotted, papery hands into the blinds and opening them to peer out. Her vision is so bad she probably couldn’t detect anything. “What’s out there?” she asked.

“It’s too dark and cold to go out there,” I said.

She kept looking, as if she was trying to piece something together. There were a couple of streetlights in front of her building, shining dim spotlights on a few cars parked by the sidewalk. A truck drove by, slicing through the quiet night with one headlight. “There’s someone,” she said, excitedly.

I helped her get back in bed, under her covers, but she got back up fifteen minutes later, just as I was falling asleep again. She seemed to be under the impression that we were somewhere else entirely, and that we would have to get up and move on soon, like we were drifters. She said, “I was trying to decide if I should try to sleep or what. Someone might come in and see me lying here and have a fit.” This is a common thread in her daily life — feeling like she’s not really home. She’s lived here for two years though. Before that, she lived in two other homes in Olympia — both bigger houses — for about two years each, and before that in Kennewick, Washington, where I grew up. But even Kennewick is a hazy memory to her now, though she lived there for over fifty years. When she mentions “home” she usually means her childhood home in Loma, Montana, a shrinking town where fewer than 100 people live in the middle of that giant state. She often says to me, “I’m not really sure how much longer we’ll be staying here.”

I’ve read articles about Alzheimer’s and spoken to other people who have been around it. I’m trying to understand it, to see if it can be fixed somehow. I wonder if there are tricks you can do to make people remember things, to bring them back to their current life. I read the book, The 36-Hour Day, by Nancy Mace and Peter Rabins, which is an important and helpful book on the disease. I started to record some of the conversations with my mom and then listen to them to see if I can figure out where her mind is going. At best, she is simply melancholic. Much of the time though, she’s panicked.

On recent visits, she often doesn’t know who I am. I can tell by the searching look in her eyes, like she is trying to place me.

On this late December night, I talked to her and tried to uncover what kind of thoughts she was having. I imagined her despair was like a swirl inside her head. “I don’t have anywhere to go anymore, because apparently the folks have given up the house,” she said, her mind back in a place where her parents are still alive, but in some kind of trouble. “I just hope that everything’s going to be all right. It just seems like we’ve had bad luck for months. It’s about time it’s changed,” she said, with a small sliver of hope. I told her everything was fine and she just needed some sleep. “This is your home and you can sleep here as much as you want.” I held her hand and told her I loved her.

We were not an affectionate, touching family that communicated love very often when I was growing up and this physical touch, the soft brushing of my fingers on her hands and arms, is something that still feels a bit unnatural to me. She seemed almost comforted for a moment though. “I love you too,” she said, and made a sound that came out like a laugh, but with a pained kind of sharpness to it. She wore a confused expression as she said it. Was it that she was so unused to saying those words? Was it that she’d wanted to say the words to someone, but because of her forgetfulness, was never really sure who she was saying them to? “I love everybody as far as I know and if I said I didn’t I was probably mad at you,” she said, laughing a little more, like whatever had been hurting her had stopped. It was nice to hear this — the kind of thing she’d say 10, 20, or 30 years before. A sweet nugget of warmth, with a small winking reservation. She had always showed that she loved us, but it was never an outpouring. She was slow and careful with her heart.

“One of these days, hopefully, we can forget all this and start living again,” she said, as if Alzheimer’s is something you can come back from. As far as I can tell, it’s not, but I just nodded my head. I realize I could be anyone to her — her brother, her father, her son, or maybe an old friend. Sometimes, people with Alzheimer’s can’t remember who you are but they recognize body language and will feel at ease if your demeanor is familiar and friendly. “I love you so much and I feel bad about picking on you and hoping you’ll do something for me once in a while,” she said. Maybe she thought I was Mark. I can’t imagine what he’s gone through, day after day, taking care of her. He was also the caregiver for our dad, when his health was breaking down. He died in 2008.

I told her again that I love her and that she’s not picking on anyone. I didn’t want her to feel bad, or like a burden; I think she often feels like a burden. She seemed exhausted, finally relaxing into her pillow but still talking. “Anyway, I really do appreciate what you’re trying to do for me. I just feel terrible about everything. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do but I’m going to have to move someplace else and just start all over.” She started circling back to that same trope — this desire to “go home.” Then her voice got dark and low. “As time goes by, I might get desperate enough and shoot myself.”

The bluntness jarred me and I wasn’t sure how to respond for a few seconds. “You shouldn’t talk like that,” I said. It was late. I was tired. I was trying not to cry.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do for the rest of my life,” she continued. “But sometimes I have thought about suicide.” Her voice trailed off a little at the end, as if she was trying to think of something else, or remember where she was.

“No, you’re not going to do that,” I said. It almost felt as if she was testing me and I found myself feeling impatient. We stayed like that, her under her blankets, me sitting on the side of her bed. On her walls around us were old photos of various family members — cousins, uncles, aunts, brothers. I was in many of the photos, but with old girlfriends, an ex-wife. One photo was of my niece and her ex-husband. This array of photos was probably at least ten years out of date. I made a mental note that her photos should be updated, but then I wondered if that would be a good idea. Maybe it would be confusing.

After a silent minute, she looked at me, as if noticing me for the first time. “That man was so nice to me though,” she said. “That man that was just here. I think he went out the front door. I was trying to help him too because he kind of acted like he needed help. He was the person who told me to lie down here.”

“That was me, Mom,” I told her.

“Well, maybe so,” she answered. “I don’t really pay much attention to who’s who or who I’m talking to or what I’m saying.”

I asked her if she knew my name.

“Your name is Joe,” she said, and then started laughing like it was a joke. But she could tell I was still waiting for an answer. “Dwayne, wasn’t it?” I tried to give her a hint and told her it was a name in the family. She couldn’t remember, so I said Kevin, and she said “Oh? Okay,” as if surprised. I asked her, “Who is Kevin?” She answered, “I don’t know. I really don’t remember. That was probably a long time ago, wasn’t it?”

I’ve read articles about Alzheimer’s and spoken to other people who have been around it. I’m trying to understand it, to see if it can be fixed somehow.

I tested her with other names and asked if she knows Matt and she remembered him quicker. I asked who he is and she said, “Matt’s my son.”

Then I said the names of her other two sons. First, she had to think about Russell for a while before saying he was “not my son, but my something or other.” What about Gary, I ask her. “Gary is just Gary,” she said, and then explained further, “Gary is just a common name.”

I asked about Elinda, the daughter she gave birth to when she was seventeen and (after a youth in mental hospitals and a life of various struggles) had died just a year before. I wondered if Elinda’s absence might be a source of confusion for her, but she said quickly and correctly, “Elinda was my daughter.”

When I said my name again, she said, “I can’t place Kevin with anything.”

She tried to sit up again, turning to look out the window. She was very curious or concerned about what was outside. I told her that nobody was out there. Everyone was inside their homes, sleeping. I had my hands on her shoulders, partly to calm her, and partly to keep her in bed. I felt like I was starting to come down with a cold and desperately wanted to go back to sleep. We had been up for an hour and my phone was on her bed, recording our conversation. “I like to think of myself of not being afraid of things but I am afraid of things,” she said then. “A lot of my problem is that I don’t like people to dislike me. So I try to be overly friendly sometimes to somebody.” I told her I was the same way, and that there was nothing wrong with being overly nice.

“I left my folks the other day,” she said. “Instead of trying to cooperate, I just got tired with them and left. Then I started feeling sorry for myself. I think I should be sent to school or something and taught how to do something.”

I can tell that her relationship with her parents is something she never felt closure with. She became pregnant in 1946, around the time she was turning 17, and even though she married the father, it was still embarrassing to her parents and they were barely in her life after that. I don’t remember them being talked about at all, even in my childhood.

While doing some internet research recently, I learned that my mom’s father died nine years before I was born, and her mother passed when I was five.

“I think they do a lot,” Mom said, speaking of them in present tense. “They expect too much sometimes, and I tried to be what they wanted me to be, but I couldn’t. When I was younger I had more insight on myself, but now I think I’d be a better person if I was married and had a husband with me all the time.” Hearing my mom voice such an old-fashioned thought made me wonder what year she was stuck in, and if that was why she married my dad.

Earlier in the day, Mom, Mark, my brother Matt, and I went out for lunch and when we returned, she became distraught. “Where did everyone go?” she said. We’ve become so used to this way of thought, we knew right away that she meant us when she said “everyone.”

In the ninety minutes between the time when we left for lunch and the time we came back, Mom had seemingly transposed our 1 o’clock bodies in her mind with entirely different people. At 2:30 in the afternoon, we were suddenly other, possibly unknown bodies to her. It almost makes you feel like you’re in a science-fiction movie. Imagine a scene where a mother is with three people in her home. Then a scene where they all get in a car and drive to lunch. Then a scene of the four of them, having lunch at a pizza restaurant buffet. Then cut to them as they return home, opening the apartment door, the mother confused, exclaiming, “Where did everyone go?” In these four scenes, the mother is played by the same actress, but there are different actors playing the other three people in each scene.

This is a common thread in her daily life — feeling like she’s not really home. When she mentions ‘home’ she usually means her childhood home in Loma, Montana.

“They should have left a note or something,” she said. She was suddenly angry, flustered. “I think it’s so rude when people do that.” She was standing in the middle of the room, her hands in front of her, palms up, like she was at a loss for words. She looked around the small apartment, as if this “everyone” were just hiding from her. It’s like the “face blindness” condition, prosopagnosia, but instead of just faces, it’s whole bodies, whole memories.

“We’re all here,” I told Mom. “There was no one else. It’s just been us today.” But she ignored my words and several more minutes of distress followed. She repeated the question, “Where did everyone go?” a few more times. Finally, Matt wrote a note on a scrap of paper and presented it to her. We’ll be back to visit soon, it said. It may seem cruel to play this kind of trick, but Mom’s mind does not work in a reasonably linear way, and we often find ourselves doing anything to make her feel safest.

I’ve tried to see if she is better in the morning, calling her on the phone as I make my breakfast in Portland. Maybe she’ll remember me. Maybe her memory is more reachable early in the day. Perhaps it’s still there when her body is rested, and it simply dwindles as the afternoons turn to night. I imagine Alzheimer’s is like a Polaroid photo in reverse — a posed family, smiling before, then fading into a milky white slab of nothing.

She usually does seem more present on the phone during the day, asking when I’ll come visit, although I’ve become unsure if she knows who I am when she’s asking me this. When I do visit though, she shuts off and doesn’t know what to do. Her Alzheimer’s makes her lose track of time and reality. She speaks of her parents in the present tense. She thinks they’re missing. She talks about how she wants to move back to Montana. She talks about it like there are people she knows there. But she doesn’t really know anyone. My mom was never social. I never remember her having friends. Surely, she must have had some. Maybe some people she worked with, when she had a job 30 or so years ago.

I think about what she’s lived through. Looking at her now, this slightly-crouched old lady with mussed-up white hair, it’s easy to forget that much of her life was a mixture of strength, forgiveness, and rebellion.

She can’t see well. She can’t hear well. The activities that brought her joy for so long — reading and quilting — are not physically possible for her anymore. All of her siblings and the family members she was closest to have passed away. I find a lot of this information about deceased relatives on a website called findagrave.com. I imagine that she feels like her life is a boring kind of hell.

I think about what she’s lived through — the teen pregnancy, three husbands, the abuses she endured from them, the daughter who was sent away for shock treatments, a boyfriend from Africa who disappeared, the family members that shunned her when she had a black baby in 1963, four years before I was born. Looking at her now, this slightly-crouched old lady with the cane and the mussed-up white hair, it’s easy to forget that much of her life was a mixture of strength, forgiveness, and rebellion.

Sometimes I wonder if this will happen to me too. Studies say that the disease is rarely passed down, but there are times when I find myself concentrating so hard on something that my memory totally freezes and stops working. I understand that’s not Alzheimer’s, but I wonder what the future holds for my memories.

Almost every day, I look out the back window in the house I live in as I wait for my coffee to heat up. I scan the backyard — the stump of the big tree that was cut down after the winter storm, the patches of grass, the tall wood fences, the birdhouse hanging high and alone off the back of the neighbor’s barn, the Japanese maple tree, the cherry trees, and the birdbath full of flickering silver water. I think back to my childhood home, in Kennewick. I would look out the window of our home and spy on my mom on Easter, as she hid Easter eggs in our yard. It was the same yard where my brothers and I would play football with the other neighborhood kids. I remember the kids’ names: Willie, Todd, Darren, Brian. I wonder if I’ll always be able to remember these things.

My mom had a life before Alzheimer’s and she was able to hold onto her memories, good and bad. I’m not sure how much longer she’ll be here on this earth, in her body, trapped in the cul-de-sac of her mental decay. It will be a moment of mercy and peace when she does breathe her last breath. These last few years of chaos for her will eventually be forgotten and we, her remaining family, will hold onto the long life of love and strength that she lived before it faded to nothing.

* * *

Kevin Sampsell is a writer, editor, and bookseller living in Portland, Oregon. His books include the novel, This Is Between Us, and the memoir, A Common Pornography.

Editor: Sari Botton