There’s this ice cream parlor at the resort that opens every day at 9:00 a.m. and closes at 11:00 p.m. It has a dance floor in the middle that lights up in neon colors wherever you step on it, like that piano at FAO Schwartz. Iris bounces all over the neon floor in only a diaper and a hot pink T-shirt, holding a giant waffle cone in one hand and a spoon in the other. She is a vision. Looking at her dancing in this ice cream parlor, I keep thinking about that podcast you did a while back, where you pretended to call in from heaven:
“Hey, it’s Harris, calling from heaven. Uh, it’s pretty great up here! It’s beautiful, for starters. Uh, Hitler’s up here, however, for the vegetarianism thing, so…callin’ bullshit on that. But other than that, it’s pretty great. It is very cloudy, and you, uh, you sit on ’em. That’s cool. Ooh, gotta go—ice cream buffet!”
I wonder if there really is a heaven. And I wonder if you’re up there, right now, sitting on a cloud, eating ice cream. If so, I hope Phish is playing in the background.
34 Ten Months, One Week, Six Days
Phish was as critical to you as air, water, leftovers, and maybe even heroin. I remember when you got hired on The Sarah Silverman Program, and you told her Phish was your religion and that you’d have to continue going to shows even if it conflicted with your work schedule. Every New Year’s Eve, you’d take what can only be described as a religious pilgrimage to New York City to see them play at Madison Square Garden. So, at midnight on the last day of the year, I think about how you’d be there now, texting me: Happy New Year, Sister. Love you.
I can’t believe we’re about to be in the year after you died.
On New Year’s Day, we visit friends who have twin boys Iris’s age. We drink champagne and play Cards Against Humanity while Thomas the Tank Engine babysits the kids. George Carlin is in it—did you know that? So random.
On our way home, I sit next to Iris in the back seat. She takes my phone, which she now calls Iris. (She thinks the phone is named Iris since the phone contains thousands of photos and videos of her.) She immediately locates the photo app, as any modern baby can do, and scrolls through all the videos. She lands on one of her favorites: you playing guitar.
In it, you’re wearing your uniform white T-shirt and jeans and sitting in a spinning office chair. Behind you is a corkboard with lots of thumbtacked, pink index cards. It looks like a writers’ room. I assume Parks. A woman holding the phone says, “Action.” Maybe Aisha? I’m not sure. You smile sheepishly and look down at your fingers as you strum a few intro chords. You sing, “Jumped in the cab, said Jay-Z, yeah I like to play. Feelin kinda homesick, I need a—” and the video cuts off. It was some adorable, acoustic version of Miley Cyrus’s “Party in the USA.” This is one of Iris’s favorite videos. She plays it several times on repeat then looks up at me, smiles, and shouts, “Harris!”
She knows who you are.
I was so worried she wouldn’t, but she does. Because you are everywhere. A gigantic painted portrait of you on a wood canvas hangs in our home office. A guy from Instagram painted it and sent us the original portrait out of the kindness of his heart. You’re on bookshelves, on walls, and in hallways. You are all over this house.
And she knows who you are.
35 Ten Months, Two Weeks, Two Days
Last January was full of hope and promise. You called me on January 4 to check in. You’d only been at rehab number three a few days, but the humanity was already seeping back into your voice. You said this place felt different than the others, and you planned to stay for a good, long while. “There are cool, funny people here who play music. These are my people,” you said. All of us were optimistic that this would be the time the sober would stick.
Last January was a much-needed fresh start. Things were finally looking up. Iris would turn one that month. We had lived through what we thought was the most turbulent year of our lives—becoming parents of a baby with a disability, spending the first three months of her life in hospitals and doctor’s offices, running all sorts of terrifying tests, being told when she was two weeks old that she would grow to struggle academically, socially, and emotionally. But each new sound, new word, new milestone proved this shitty doomsday hypothesis totally wrong.
Our daughter was a force.
My brother was safe and sober and finally in the right place. I knew 2015 would be a good year. The trauma was behind us. And we had survived.
There was so much hope and promise last January.
• • •
This January, I wake up feeling like shit. I am neither refreshed nor hopeful. I don’t want to go back to work today. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to do anything anymore under these circumstances.
Most days, I wake up to a screaming two-year-old who doesn’t understand the distinction between morning and the middle of the goddamn
