Like I have to keep saying it or it isn’t real. Like I have to keep reminding myself that this is really happening because it’s just too fucking unbelievable.
More unbelievable is that your death is a now a trending topic on social media. My entire Facebook feed is you—photos, articles, podcasts, videos, quotes, blog posts, tweets. On Instagram, the hashtag #harriswittels brings up hand-drawn sketches and paintings by strangers, tribute photos of you doing stand-up and playing the recurring role of Harris, the animal control guy, on Parks and Rec captioned with favorite quotes like “I hate smoking sections—unless we’re talking about the movie The Mask with Jim Carrey, then the smoking section is my favorite part.” Someone has sketched a detailed black-and-white picture of you and made it into a sticker with a caption that reads Humble Living: Harris Wittels (1984–2015). People are pasting them all over LA, taking photos of them whenever spotted, and posting the photos online. It’s like a game: Find the Harris Wittels memorial sticker.
To see it unfold in this way is simultaneously comforting and horrifying. Your death is not just something we are able to deal with privately as a family; it’s something people are grieving publicly and “liking” on Facebook. The Westboro Baptist Church is literally standing outside the offices of LA Weekly holding protest signs that say God Hates Fag Enablers, Repent or Perish, and Harris In Hell. It’s sick as fuck, although a spectacle you would have likely enjoyed. Your friend Joe Mande sums it up best on Twitter: “Goddammit, Harris, the Westboro Baptist Church just called you a ‘fag enabler’ and you’re not here to see it.”
I keep thinking about what your business manager said when I spoke to him in those first few hours, that once the news got out it would be a runaway train, out of our control. It didn’t register at the time. I knew you were successful, but you were always so casual and humble about your career that I didn’t realize just quite how much you meant to everyone else. Yet another layer to wrap my broken head around.
By Day Five, the waiting for your body to come home becomes so insufferable that I storm out of the living room screaming and crying at the top of my lungs as if I’m a thirteen-year-old girl in the midst of a temper tantrum: “I’m sick of waiting! This is bullshit! We need to bury him. We need to bury him now! I don’t want to fucking wait anymore! I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE!” No one pays me any attention. This sort of climactic outburst belongs in the scene.
Not that we are super religious, but in Judaism, it’s customary to bury a loved one within forty-eight hours. And in Judaism, the customs are really the point. It takes seven days to complete the autopsy and fly you back home to Houston, where you will be buried beside the plots Mom and Dad bought for themselves, thinking they’d be in the ground long before either of us.
The day before the funeral, I realize I have nothing to wear. I have to go to a store where people are buying dresses for happy occasions and buy a dress to wear to your funeral, a dress that will forever hang in my closet as the dress I wore to my brother’s funeral. I’ll never wear it again, but I won’t ever give it away. It will just hang there, sadly and forever, as a daily reminder that things can always be worse.
04 Week Two
The sun sets and rises as it somehow continues to do, and it’s time to bury you in the ground.
The scene is equal parts sad and surreal.
The shiny black limousines.
The collision of silence and noise inside of my head and the inability to take a deep breath.
The paralysis at the door of the chapel after being hit by the sudden impact of the crowd. Once I go in, I must sit through your funeral, and I don’t want to sit through your funeral. I don’t want to go inside. I physically resist going past the threshold. Someone behind me gives me a shove and holds my hand—my husband, probably—and we walk the long, center aisle to the front row. I don’t make eye contact with anyone but can feel the weight of everyone’s eyes on me. We sit directly in front of the casket and the giant poster of your face that’s hanging on an easel. It’s the photo from the inside of your book jacket where you’re wearing your favorite blue hoodie, black T-shirt, and half smile. I remember when you sent me the proofs. I chose this one.
Then the service.
The eulogy.
The police escorts and the caravan to the cemetery.
The customary shoveling of the dirt into the hole.
The minyan that lasts until 10:00 p.m.
The thank-you and the thank-you and the thank-you and the thank-you.
The brutal exhaustion and the feeling that I very well might die, too.
The events of the following week are equally sad and surreal.
Like the unexpected feeling of betrayal when Leonard Nimoy dies the day after your funeral and your position of Tragic Dead Celebrity of the Week is usurped on social media.
The flying to Los Angeles two days after the funeral with Mom, Mike, and the baby. Dad refuses to go. He can’t handle it.
The packing up of your house and your entire life, every knick-knack telling a story I’ll never hear.
The endless stream of your wonderful friends lining up to help, comfort, feed, console, pack, and lean on.
The simultaneous elation and despair of the tribute shows.
The rehab journals from all three facilities and the
