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My dead friend made me write this because he’s an attention whore Leo

 

It’s like the waiter knew what was coming. There was a twinkle in his eye when he set that Shrimp Po’ Boy down on my table and paused with a dimpled smile, me having done nothing to earn such friendliness. His eyes seemed to tell me he knew what was ahead of us that weekend when he asked me if I needed anything else.

“Proof that God exists?”

I’d come to New Orleans because my best friend was lecturing at a theater conference (nerd alert). Specifically on movement in theater—his thesis for his PhD. I’d also come to New Orleans to tell him, the most spiritually aligned, kind-hearted person that I knew, who also happened to be Mormon, that I had recently come to terms with the fact that I was leaving the LDS faith. That my entire worldview and belief system had crumbled upon finally acknowledging my doubts in the validity of this organization, it's leaders, and it's history. That after unpacking things, I now believed the Church not only lacked divine inspiration but was a harmful force in the world. A force that I no longer could, in good conscience, support. And now, because of this, my Mormon marriage, my Mormon friendships, and Mormon family would likely crumble too.

Maybe that sounds dramatic to outsiders? Or naive? Eternally fearful of people’s judgement of my involvement with the Church I can hear the criticism: Twenty-eight years and you finally came to that conclusion, huh? It’s just a religion you grew up with, what’s the big deal?

I’m not asking for a medal for leaving it, but I am saying it was difficult. And that designed cultural difficulty keeps a lot of people paying tithing to an organization that uses it to dismantle LGBTQ rights, among other things.

We were raised in it. We were bred by it. It controlled every facet of our lives—every minute of our day, every decision, every thought. We were good Mormon boys who had served missions, believed in God and Jesus and The Book of Mormon as true scripture translated by a true Prophet Joseph Smith. We changed people’s lives with our belief. We married our partners in the Mormon temple. Yeah, that one. In those clothes. Hell, Chris played the Apostle Paul in the LDS Church’s educational videos. I’m not saying this to boast of piety, I’m telling you this to help you understand our commitment. Our belief. Our knowledge of something after this life. A knowledge that was in our very sinews. (Mormons are big into the word sinews for reasons you can google). But my sinews didn’t keep this knowledge anymore. And Chris’ were starting to erode because of a deadly disease. 

Telling my wife was hard. Telling my best friend was going to be hard. Telling my family was going to be hard. But leaving was right. And I was raised to do hard things that were right.

Dropping that news on Chris quickly and rightly became dwarfed by something much more important. I thought my situation was the end of the world. I mean, it felt like it. But my world wasn’t the one that was ending.

When he arrived, he sat down across from me with a frozen smile and a thousand-yard stare.

“Wow, you look so thin! What’s your fitness program right now? It’s really working!” I was totally oblivious and worse, trying to cover up my nerves.

He chuckled under his breath because he’s tickled by irony. The greater the irony, the greater the tickle. That chuckle chuckle worried me a bit.

“Well, why don’t we head back up to the hotel room and I’ll tell you.”

Minutes later, we were on a foreboding stroll through the French Quarter. Joy was everywhere; street bands, groups of friends, couples laughing and dancing, open carry drinks in hand in the southern humid air. The Big Easy giving human beings permission to step into an alternate universe. Their most carefree one. But Chris was limping to the hotel.

“Hey, you have a slight hitch in your step. Did you injure yourself working out?” (Facepalm.) 

“Umm, yeah… let’s just get upstairs and I’ll tell you.”

My imagination at the moment was embarrassingly limited.

“I have ALS.”

He said it sitting across from me on his queen bed. Our hotel room had a weird expressionist vibe, like the upper attic in Edward Scissorhands, or like the staff had just cleared out Dr. Frankenstein’s equipment and rolled in two beds. Wood floors, low-key lighting, huge wood-framed awning windows with even bigger, weirder curtains that framed the rain outside. The moody weather had arrived just in time to provide more drama—as if cued by a stage manager in the other room. 

My body immediately understood but my brain couldn’t catch up: American Sign Language! What? No, that’s ASL! It’s that other thing! The Ice Bucket Challenge that you did a year earlier, for god’s sake! Wait, not god! He doesn’t exist anymore! Bad. Sickness. He’s sick. Bad. Death? No way. No no no. American Sign Language? Shut up! Why would he tell me that? I don’t know—I don’t understand English anymore—why is my body so sweaty!

“It’s also referred to as Lou Gehrig’s disease. I found out yesterday. They don’t have a cure.”

I tried to keep it together as best I could. I knew he already had this conversation with his doctor, his wife, his family—and he was keeping it together, so come hell (doesn’t exist) or high water so would I. Chris has the best wife and five incredible kids. He’s in his early forties and… I failed and cried.

“I’m not in pain, it’s okay.”

My brain tried to figure a way out, trying to minimize this, trying to find hope. Suddenly, a memory: Stephen Hawking! He had this right? He’s still alive? Yes he did have ALS and he is still alive because I remember reading one of his books when I was little and my mom left me at Barnes & Noble and I read this passage about the nature of the Universe––the infinity of it. It’s so big, that statistically speaking, there very likely could be another planet out there, either in our Universe or a parallel one, where everything has evolved the same as it has here. Except there’s just one or two things different. Like Stephen Hawking’s name is Ted and he doesn’t have ALS.

That thought somehow comforted me: Stephen Hawking does have this. And he lived a long time! So, Chris has a lot of time! Eternity! You put a thousand monkeys in a room with a thousand typewriters forever and they’ll eventually write Hamlet! Chris’ favorite play. He loves Shakespeare! Shut up brain…

“Yeah, uh, he did live a long time with it. The average is two and a half years, though.”

Shit.

“…Shoot.”

“Yeah.”

Sometimes, on hard days, I think about the grace Chris had through all of this. He later told me that he and his wife L had a “two-minute rule.” For two minutes a day, he’d feel sad about his diagnosis, feel angry about how unfair it was, and when the timer was up, he’d get on with the day. He’d say it was because life was too short. Life was too precious to waste feeling sorry for himself. That’s a nice reminder. But I think that was only part of it for him. I think he did this at least in part because he had too many people he wanted to help before he left—since that’s mostly what he spent his remaining time doing.

Look, I don’t recommend turning your boys trip into an, “I’m dying of an irreversible disease!” slash, “I’m leaving our cult!” weekend… but if you do, do it in New Orleans. 

There was voodoo and mysticism around every corner to conveniently remind you about death and implore you to believe. To conjure. To confront fears and commune with dreams. There were bookstores with ancient relics, palm readers, cursed trinkets, music boxes, fortune tellers with all the answers and solicitous strippers in master’s programs with all the questions. Not to mention it’s a great city to eat your feelings in. Gumbo, creole pastas, oysters that were shucked minutes ago by a gentlemen across the room watching you eat them, shrimp scampi, shrimp and grits, fried shrimp Po’boy sandwiches and every other shrimp item that Bubba lists to Forest Gump while they’re scrubbing floors together. It was divine, heavenly, celestial… all Chef Meril, or any chef there, needed to do was proclaim himself a prophet and he had a new follower.

Aboard the trolley, Chris talked with everyone, and everyone fell in love with him, as usual. This is where I decided to try for the first time a little substance I brought from Los Angeles. I had said no to marijuana all my life but suddenly it felt like the right time. Earlier that week, a writer had procured some gummies from Colorado and slid them to the middle of our writers’ room table, offering them to the group. As impervious as I am to the “Great and Spacious Building” (another Mormon term worthy of a google), I was intrigued. It was my first writers’ room, and it was also the only time anyone ever did this in one. I grabbed a gummy on a whim late that night before I flew out to New Orleans. It was serendipitously employed that afternoon.

I was too scared and drastically under-dosed. Whether placebo effect or not, I was filled with warm fuzzies, which reminded me that I was with my best friend, away from the world, and regardless of what was waiting for us when we got back, we were here together right now in a beautiful city filled with wonder.

Maybe the greatest benefit of studying theater was valuing presence in my life. And I think that was Chris’ superpower. When he was with you, his crystal eyes were with you. Nothing was more important than right now, with someone.  

One of the biggest issues I could never reconcile with my faith was how all of us were sacrificing so much of the here and now for a promised reward later, the details of which were vague and debated. I mean, we gave up two years in the prime of our lives on this promise. One of the most prominent features of the Mormon Church is how busy it keeps you. Work is salvation. Busy-ness is currency. Hardship and suffering is admired. Don’t worry about missing out on everything, even your family. You’re serving the one true church! 

I don’t believe divinity would ask that of us. There’s too much heaven to be experienced here and now. And heaven is as subjective as someone’s love for a certain film or book or play. I dare you to spend two years of your life walking around talking to strangers about what they believe. If you’re curious enough about people, you’d be blown away at what you get back. What one person fears as evil may save another person’s soul. And none of us really have any business deciding for each other which is which.

As I watched Chris on the trolley––sitting on one of the wooden benches laughing with his new friends, an older couple with a teenage son and daughter––the substance I had been taught was evil my whole life helped put a lens over my eyes that day that made this beautifully clear.

By the end of our trolley ride, Chris had convinced these parents that their son studying English at Florida State University wasn’t going to be a waste, in fact, it was going to be a beautiful thing that would enrich his life forever. The kid beamed at Chris. The Lord’s work.

Though they did half-jokingly ask if their son could come study theater with Chris. Chris and I shared a glance and then he gleefully replied, “Oh well that wouldn’t work because I’ll be dead.”

At one point, Chris got a call from his neurologist, who also happened to be my ex-father-in-law. At risk of telling a separate story, I'll just say that my relationship with my ex-father-in-law was strained. He was in the medical field. I was a writer. He was in Mormon regional leadership. I was having a baby with his daughter outside of getting married in the Mormon Temple. This was a huge no-no in Mormonism that involved a year of repentance for J and I, wearing a form of scarlet letter around our community. A community that revered her dad, a gifted neurosurgeon who had saved many people’s lives, and who traveled the world speaking about his skills at conferences. And on occasion traveled to these conferences with a woman thirty years younger than him, which I discovered when I randomly ended up on their plane merely hours after I proposed to his daughter. Like I said, another story.

He moved Chris to the front of his nine-month line when I recommended Chris see him about his back pain. And if it weren’t for his skill, connections, and a hunch––which he and others alluded to being the spirit of God working through him––if it weren’t for these things, Chris may have gotten the answer to what was happening with his body months later. Sure, perhaps a miracle. Maybe those do exist.

Chris told me he was grateful that it was me he was with that weekend when he found out. But the truth is, I was probably the worst person to be there with him that weekend. There were people in his life way more qualified to take care of him, to console him. In the years of his sickness that followed, there were people who organized fundraisers, people who put on his best musicals with his favorite cast to celebrate him, people who built entire sections of his house so he could get around in his wheelchair, people who drove him back and forth to doctor’s appointments, dinners, childcare, anything and everything. It’s a marvel how communities do this for the sick and the weary all over the world. Mormon communities are exceptionally good at taking care of their own. 

Maybe he was grateful it was me because I may suck at all of the above but I do know how to have a good time. Chris and I met when he became our advisor for our sketch comedy club at university. Chris’ connections with Second City led me to my internship at iO West in Los Angeles which became my community and where I found my first jobs in the industry. So maybe it was that or because I’d had enough shit jobs, shit friends, and shit luck to know that making life your bit is sometimes all you got.

The highlight of the trip was stepping into Fritzel’s European Jazz Club. The band was composed of a drummer, pianist, bass, guitar, and three-piece brass section. They’d each take turns soloing and singing. Real old school jazz shit. And nobody dares fuck with real old school jazz shit. I may not have believed in a god that night, but I did believe they could summon him to prove me wrong if they wanted. They played Blueberry Hill—one of Chris’ all-time favorites. They took requests, and I shouted Van Morrison’s Wavelength, which I had been listening to all week. They did not play it.

Everyone loved Chris, as usual, and everyone danced. It was the second time I’d had alcohol (when I was twenty-three, I shakingly took a shot of vodka with a nice lady celebrating her 30th birthday that I didn’t want to offend. After, my college roommate personally committed me to confessing to our bishop about it. Which I did). But it was the first time in my life that people bought me drinks at a bar—and subsequently the first time I discovered the joys of vomiting behind one. 

It was magical. And for a couple of hours, we were transported to that alternate universe where Chris’ name was Ted and he didn’t have ALS.

Chris cancelled his lecture. Which is understandable, considering the circumstances. Talking about the importance of helping actors get out of their heads and into their bodies would be hard to do after finding out that yours is breaking down and headed to Jesus’ Junkyard. He’d been traveling around the world giving that lecture, and it was going to be the first time I heard it. It’s ok we decided, because I sort of lived the lecture.

We became besties when I was a case study for his PhD. In college I asked him if he did one-on-one coaching for acting. I knew I wanted to move to Los Angeles, and I didn’t feel like I was progressing fast enough. I didn’t have any money to offer, but he had told me he was trying to get in shape, so I pitched being his personal trainer.

I spent the summer constructing workouts for Chris, and he’d construct artist exercises for me. Pretty early on, we recognized that we had a similar temperament. I was headed to Los Angeles to make TV and Film as soon as I could. Chris had recently gotten back from his leap, studying directing Shakespeare at Exeter University and The Globe Theatre.

I think a lot of what we did could be classified as movement therapy. It helped me identify a deep shame and negative inner monologue that was crippling me from expressing myself and connecting with others. In the years since, my therapist has helped me pinpoint the doctrines and practices I grew up with that led to that negative inner monologue.

That summer was transformative. I remember sitting on the floor of the empty black box theater, exhausted from performing and dissecting a sonnet, discussing at length how we affect people with truth in storytelling.

We talked about art being a spiritual thing. That people are moved with those warm fuzzies from watching a movie or reading a book or listening to a song because, as we believed, “the Spirit of God testifies of truth.” I believe in that principle still—even if I define the Spirit of God differently now. We decided people’s souls need storytelling like their bodies needed medicine—even if people didn’t understand that on a conscious level. For example, I don’t understand brain surgery, but I know it can save someone’s life. Like that summer did mine.

The next day we went to the famous mausoleums. It was a bit eerie standing there looking at them, one guy who didn’t really believe in an afterlife anymore and one guy who was recently doomed to his in a horrific way. It was haunting and beautiful and we laughed.

Chris explained that the way he’ll die from ALS is that his nervous system will slowly stop communicating with his muscles and eventually his organs. He explained he’d lose his ability to walk, then lose his ability to talk, then eventually it would just be his eyes that could move. And then, one day, his lungs would fail, and he’d suffocate. It was something he now knew for sure, the knowledge resting somewhere in his sinews beside his testimony of Jesus Christ as his Savior.

Then he made me promise something. The sun was setting as we leaned on the graveyard fence. He said it while he was wiping something off his new “tight-bright-white pants,” that he was super jazzed about and that provided plenty of bits for the weekend—

“Promise me that we’ll still have fun and joke around and laugh. Even when I can’t talk. Promise me that you’ll remember it’s me in here—when my body has stopped working, and my lips have stopped moving, and everyone is shouting things at me like I’m an elderly person. Remember that I’m still in here.”

I wish I could have done more to help him. But I did do my best to keep that promise. The last movie we saw together featured one of our favorite songs in the credits. We listened to it in the theater together silently, his eyes darting around from joy. And then he had no choice but to hear me drone on about it as I wheeled him out.

Trying to keep that promise was also how I saw him for the last time. I showed up at his house in 2020 one day trying to surprise him with a stupid comedy bit we used to do when we were in a show together years prior. He wasn’t getting any visitors inside the house because of the pandemic, so I figured he could have a laugh from the window.

L stopped me before I got started. She said Chris was going and he had some moments of lucidity left with friends before he spent his last hours with family. A miracle, for sure, that I got to see him one last time.

Then his son read Hamlet to him until he passed.

I started believing in God again after Chris died. Perhaps because of his death. Which I think makes him chuckle from the irony. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe he's just grateful we get to talk again.

I think he was playing 4D chess when he made me promise to keep laughing through his illness. If he could smile through a shitty hand like that, I can through anything.

When I pray with my daughter now, she prays to Heavenly Father, and I just pray. It started from trying to talk to Chris and, I believe, getting some things back.

He still reminds me to stay connected to my body and my gut—because it knows things my head doesn’t. He reminds me to take some sort of “two minutes,” and to feel it all.

He reminds me that there are many other versions of this life and some of them are better and some of them are worse.

But in this life, at this moment, your name is Ted, and a fantastic jazz club might play your favorite song if you still show up. And the most delicious shrimp Po Boy you’ve ever had my taste like proof that God exists.