The Kind of Sad I Was

Sad dads, a sad son, and a new podcast interview with Amanda Petrusich.

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In today’s essay, originally published in 2023, A.J. writes about seeing The National live, in search of catharsis after the death of his father. It’s a personal favorite. We’re re-running it in conjunction with the release of a new podcast episode with Amanda Petrusich, who wrote what A.J. calls the definitive profile of the band for The New Yorker. Amanda joins A.J. to talk about grief.

You can listen here:

Possibly related! It’s time for you, dear readers, to send us your CHECK-INS for this June.

Here are the details: 150-300 words.

EMAIL US HERE: tsbcheckins@thesmallbow.com SUBJECT: JUNE CHECK-IN

Here is one from last month that I really loved:

I reached 200 days without booze over Easter Weekend and I quickly told my dad in passing, as if it were a curiosity or piece of trivia. He gave me a fist bump and said he was proud of me and I immediately felt embarrassed that I am keeping track of how many days I’ve gone without drinking.

I tell my family and friends that I am “not drinking” and that I “don’t really have much interest in it anymore.” I do not tell them that I had been planning my days around my next drink for years and occasionally poured tequila into cans of sparkling water during family visits. I don’t tell them that one of the hardest parts of quitting was how simple it became to use binge drinking to “accidentally” compliment a nasty string of bulimia dotted over many years, or that my relationship with food had gotten so bad that I couldn’t really eat without being buzzed.

I was always the “easy one,” which is the most well-meaning albatross that parents hang around your adolescent neck. Those aren’t the types of things that the easy one burdens anyone else with. But I am proud of myself, even if nobody else knows.

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I’ll Get Funny Again

Originally published June 11, 2023

On January 29th, a little more than two weeks after my father died, I bought tickets to see The National at the Greek Theater. I was still in the early opening curtains of grief, so I was convinced the universe had put the band on tour this year, the year I’d found solace in their music, specifically, the song “Start a War,” a track off their 2007 album, Boxer.

This was the song I chose to listen to on repeat during the last night with him in the hospital, the one I hoped would give that moment its proper cinematic end. Several times I put the phone on his shoulder and played him the song as he labored through his final morphine-filled moments, but he did not notice.

Between January 29th and their concert date on May 31st, I allotted myself time to fully mourn as best I could, even though I wasn’t sure what mourning would look like. At what point would I feel the loss and how much would it weigh?

But now, the universe has provided a roadmap. I would head to the Greek on May 31st, and The National would play “Start a War,” and it would echo across the dusty orange hills of Griffith Park as an apparition of my smiling father hovered next to me. “We’re okay, son,” he’d say. And, poof, all my resentments would be swept away with the rest of the ashes.

I’d seen the National before, actually — in 2010 at Beacon Theatre. I remember very little of the show because I began to fall asleep halfway through it. This was a period, too, when I considered myself a true fan of the band — Boxer was an album I ascribed significant meaning to for a period of my life, but I can’t remember exactly why.

But between 2007 and that night at the Beacon, I became cynical and bored by their act. The twinkly drone of their songs wasn’t really hitting me anymore, especially live. When I would settle into a familiar melody of a song I used to love, say, “Apartment Story" or “Mistaken for Strangers,” Matt Berninger’s droopy vocalizing began to sound like it was being pumped through a stereo from inside a burning building: a slow-motion dropping of octaves, followed by a series of warps and pops.

The only time I perked up was during “Mr. November,” as he snaked through the crowd with his 9,000-foot microphone cord, assuring the audience, one by one, that he won’t fuck us over. It felt like a rock show for that brief moment, but my main takeaway from their performance was that I completely understood why people hated their band.

But a couple Wednesdays ago, I was ready to have my mind changed, and close the loop on my complicated relationship with my father. It was a good start: peak springtime in Los Angeles, full of jacarandas and a late hazy sunset. Plus, I ran into some friends. My buddy Albin was there, cool as ever. Also bumped into my friend Peter, a person I’d primarily known over Zoom from another men’s 12-step group. Good times. Then I saw Eddie from my favorite Al-Anon meeting, who I hadn’t seen in a long time.

Seeing Eddie, in particular, was a good omen for me — he was a vital force in my Al-Anon group and had some very poignant and helpful shares I clung to over the years, mainly when he talked about the death of his own father. One day he wore his dad’s old shoes to a meeting, which I found incredibly healing. Because Eddie had an important-looking lanyard around his neck, he could stand directly behind the mixing board. My seats were on the balcony, but I chose to stick close to him instead. The lights went down, and a piano clinked: “Once Upon a Poolside,” a song off their new album I hadn't listened to, started the show. The song was pretty and glum, as usual. I turned to Eddie and patted him on the back. “It’s good to see you, man,” I said. Off we went.

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So why “Start a War”? Why did I choose that song to be the one that would remind me of my father until the day I myself die?

It’s probably not about a complicated father-son relationship but most likely one about a tempestuous and failing romantic one, which is what accounts for the subjects of most of their songs.

And another reason why it’s such an odd choice — he’d hate the song. To be fair to The National, his musical taste was completely inane. One of his favorite records was the Mama Mia! movie soundtrack, which he’d listen to at high volume on his way to an early tee time at his shitty country club. (“That Cheryl [sic] Streep can really sing!”)

I’d chosen this song for the both of us because I considered our relationship a war throughout most of my life — our communication was constantly breaking down, prolonging conflicts more than necessary. But the war that comes to mind is make-believe, perpetrated by little green army men with bazookas and rifles all pointed at nothing. This was our war: imaginary, childlike, and cheap.

The line from the song that gets me every time, the one I’ve been singing to myself in every quiet moment since he died, goes like this:

Whatever went away/I'll get it over again/I'll get money, I'll get funny again.

I always thought that if I became financially secure, enough to buy him dinner or pay for my own golf shoes — whatever made him proudest — we’d be at peace. But whenever I had a brief windfall, it, too, came freighted with more of his undermining concerns — 401k suggestions or reminders that I should set enough side more for taxes, or Roth IRAs, always with the goddamn Roth IRAs.

And I’d respond with high-minded petulance and defiance, draining my bank account by making an idiotic purchase, usually an ugly expensive piece of furniture, or an impromptu vacation to some bizarre place just to go broke on purpose, to show him who’s boss. Take that, Dad.

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A few weeks ago, Amanda Petrusich of The New Yorker wrote what will most likely be the definitive profile of The National — “The Sad Dads of The National,” a headline perfect enough for both The New Yorker and ClickHole. She describes The National’s particular brand of melancholy as a study in micro-grief — “the slow accumulation of ordinary losses.”

Maybe there’s a person you once loved but lost touch with. A friend who moved to a new town. An apple tree that stood outside your bedroom window leveled to make way for broadband cable. An old dog. A former colleague. We are always losing, or leaving, or being left, in ways both minor and vast.

In the story’s final, most solemn section, Petrusich reveals her proximity to a recent heavy loss — her husband died a few months ago, and she’s still destabilized by it. But even in those traumatic and overwhelming circumstances, writing about The National was, in her opinion, an ideal assignment.

I’d always responded to the band’s nervous articulations of heartbreak and yearning, but now they felt heavier, truer, and more comforting. Sadness can sometimes feel like an aesthetic choice, fodder for memes and T-shirts that say things like “Too Bad So Sad” or “Just Another Worst Day of My Life.” Compounding pessimism can feel like the only way to express compassion, especially online. That’s not the kind of sad I was. The National’s music speaks to a more intimate, nonperformative sorrow.

When I read that, I immediately questioned whether my sorrow was performative, one that I’m using to manipulate readers (you) because I know it’s a shortcut for me to achieve a brief sense of connection to an outer realm of humans that I’d otherwise ignore or never fully admit that I needed.

I also have a flawed, superficial system for determining whether a newsletter is successful or a total flop, solely based on the number of complimentary emails or financial donations I receive before 7 a.m. It makes for some anxious and adrenaline-filled Tuesday mornings, but it’s more a testament to my newfound seriousness about writing, as opposed to the short-lived thrills I associated with old-school blogging.

But I’m even more attuned to the results when I write about my father. If I get crickets, I feel the failure more intensely than I would otherwise, because then I’m stuck with the memory of him leaving angry voicemail messages about how ashamed he was whenever I wrote anything too honest about our family.

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I am still jolted by the passage of time, as in: The time between his dementia and death was a slow, loopy, arduous five years. Still, in the five months since his death, I constantly forget that he’s not coming back. But now I have this easy recall of random and inconsequential parts of his existence: the sounds of his feet on the rug as he entered our old family room in Ambler; the frustrated sigh that came from inside his whole body as he pushed coat hangers around in the closet on a cold, snowy morning. Ordinary losses I’d accumulated and long forgotten are now presented as core memories.

By the time the encore set began, I’d conceded that The National would not play “Start A War” for me. I am sober enough to know that Higher Powers are not our own personal DJs. It would have been nice, but instead I eased into how okay everything was — how good my father and I are now.

As the encore songs wound down, my feet and hips started to hurt in that real old-man way — first at any concert I’ve attended. I wanted to leave early, but there would be no time saved in doing so. Plus, I wanted to talk to Eddie more, and I figured we’d have a good amount of time to do that as everyone dizzily shuffled to the exits.

The National closed with a song from 2010’s High Violet, “Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks,” a song I’d never heard before, but one I discovered after is a staple closer and a crowd favorite. Berninger only uses a microphone for this song to orchestrate the rest of the audience in a sing-along.

Oh, the water’s a rising
There’s still no surprise you
Vanderlyle crybaby cry
Man, it’s all been forgiven
Swans are a-swimmin’.
All the very best of us
String ourselves up for love

Everyone sang, arms raised, exultantly swaying, as if they were waiting for the song forever, one that was played just for them.

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MORE GRIEF:

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A POEM ON THE WAY OUT:

Good Night

by Carl Sandburg

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Many ways to spell good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July

spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.

They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.

Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue

and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack

mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying

in a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields

to a razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.

Many ways to spell good night.

—via Poets.org

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