Molly Minturn’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.
When I showed up for my interview at the magazine, I was perfectly on time. The chapel clock chimed as I put my hand on the doorknob. Before I could turn it, the door opened and I saw Kevin, the managing editor, for the first time. The way I’ve framed it sounds like something out of a romantic comedy, but instead of romance I felt something familial when I saw his face. He looked at me like we shared a secret—that’s the only way I know how to put it. His eyes actually twinkled. I stood there on the step, my mind flashing to vintage images of Santa Claus. But Kevin wasn’t jolly, a fact for which I was grateful, because neither was I.
He gave me a tour of the office, which was housed in one of the oldest buildings at the university. The general atmosphere was threadbare yet confident—WASPy, really. The wooden floors were so worn that some planks looked white, like birch trees. Each room had a fireplace, though none of them worked, which, in the end, was an apt metaphor for the soul of the place. The mantel in the main room was lined with copper Ellies, a kind of cold fire.
I remember how well dressed he was for my interview, his pressed blue shirt and loafers. When I got to know him better, I understood that he cared about his appearance even when it seemed like he hated everything in the world. In the nightmares I had about him dying before he died, he had hanged himself in his office, and he was always wearing a suit.
***
I reported to Kevin for my job, copyediting long, lugubrious pieces about war for the magazine, processing author payments, reading poems from all over the country. For all of the voices flowing into the magazine through submissions, the office was often silent, each of us in a separate bell jar. Sometimes the editor would give me a message for Kevin rather than speaking to him himself, or vice versa. I remember walking down the dark hall in between their offices, looking at the small window high up at one end. The silence of that space felt like of church.
My desk faced the fireplace and back door, the chapel through the window to my left. On rare days the chapel bells chimed on the seventh dissonant chord for funerals of the university’s preeminent secret society members. I remember looking at Waldo, my coworker who sat right behind me, and we would raise our eyebrows at each other. “The Sevens,” I would whisper and he would nod knowingly. I remember pressing myself against the window hoping to see a Seven, whose membership in the society was not to be revealed until after death. There was never anyone standing in front of the chapel.
In those moments I felt as though I’d arrived at the job I’d always envisioned for myself; it was like something out of a Laurie Colwin novel. Her protagonists often found themselves in outdated, moody offices performing obscure research and administrative tasks. “It didn’t take me long to love my job at the Race Music Foundation,” says Geraldine Coleshares in my favorite of Colwin’s books, Goodbye Without Leaving. “I did my work, which required familiarity and devotion—I had plenty of those—and did not call for special skills, of which I had none.”
I felt that way—unremarkable and lucky, cocooned in manuscripts and invoices, perfectly unseen. It was the same feeling I’d had at the cubby desks in the stacks of my college library, walled in by books, watching the sky darken through the skinny windows, which reminded me of castle arrow-loops.
In Kevin I felt a kinship in the sense that he, too, was comfortable being unseen. He was the quiet heartbeat of the office—the first to arrive in the mornings, the last to leave. He was the one who turned the lights on and off. I thought of him as the man behind the curtain (pay no attention). If I was sloppy or hasty in my work, I could count on him to walk to my desk, brow furrowed, with a pointed question, and just as quickly disappear back into his office. I could hear the floorboards creak in my mind before he even made his approach.
But what is it, this urge to be largely unseen? In college I’d read Jane Kenyon’s long poem, “Having it Out with Melancholy,” and for years, three lines from the first section hung in my mind: “And from that day on/ everything under the sun and moon/ made me sad.” Like a little ghost, the words hovered close by. Everything makes me sad, they whispered—a purple crocus blooming, a confused old man in the park, the hundreds of poems I rejected each year.
Kevin was the same, and didn’t keep his depression a secret. He would sometimes tell me about his insomnia, his trouble finding medication that worked. Occasionally he had to take a day off if he was too blue to come in, but so did I from time to time.
***
For my first two years at the job, there were more good days than bad. I learned early on that Kevin, who lived alone, liked to cook. He invited my husband and me to dinner parties—elaborate, old-fashioned dinner parties with multiple courses and ingredients I had only vaguely heard of—tenderloin with chimichurri sauce, cherry clafoutis. The parties always began with an amuse bouche, carried tenderly to the table by Kevin, the components of the night’s dishes all foretold in a delicate bundle.
When El Bulli closed I sent him an email about it with the subject line, “Tragic.” He answered with an image of Alinea’s menu. What exactly is venison with fireplace log? or transparency of raspberry & yogurt? or eggnog with buffalo trace? he wrote.
We spent New Year’s Eves together—a holiday that I have always dreaded, the same way I dread spring. It is a holiday for the young, the idealistic, the confident, the way spring is a season for the beautiful people.
We reclaimed New Year’s Eve and made it about elaborate meals and parlor games. Some years, he would even put on party hats. One picture I still have of him from New Year’s Eve, 2008. Kevin is wearing a tall, cone-shaped hat, golden, with clocks running up the sides, reminiscent of the Mad Hatter. He is looking away from the camera, but he is almost smiling. He is the jester and the sage, a reminder of time passing, of his time passing.
In early 2009, I discovered I was pregnant. I told Kevin I when I was only eight weeks along. He’d noticed me hunched over my desk, green, eating entire boxes of Wheat Thins and nothing else for a week straight. In his quiet office, which to me always felt safe, like a giant wooden shoebox, I told him my news and asked him to keep it to himself until I was into my second trimester. He felt like family then, like my future baby’s godfather or uncle. We shared a secret together.
A week later, work was slow in the office. We’d just finished an issue; the interns had little to do and so they circled the table of books up for review next to my desk. One held up a book of poetry about the apocalypse. “What would you do if zombies took over?” he asked.
Waldo replied first, describing the homestead he had planned and the hundreds of jars of preserved fruits and vegetables he and his wife already had stacked in their cellar.
Kevin had come into the room at this point and stood in the background, amused.
“I think for me, I’d end it quickly,” I said. “Some bourbon and a shotgun should do the trick.”
“But what about the baby?” Kevin asked. Everyone turned to him and then turned slowly to me. Kevin clapped his hands over his mouth and squeezed his eyes shut. He then started—and I could tell he was desperately trying not to—to shake with laugher.
It was so good to see him laugh I couldn’t feel angry. When he was happy, whether it was that day in the office, or sitting at the head of the table at a dinner party, the large, uncovered windows of his apartment spread out behind him like a black ocean, I felt a peace. It was like faith, that happiness. When I saw it in him, my own path forward through gloom seemed possible.
Tags: friendship, loss, molly minturn, suicide, writing
Every word of this is so finely crafted. I am beyond moved.
This is incredibly beautiful; thank you for writing it and sharing it with us. Everything makes you sad is a sentiment that I think can be understood by most of us who pay real attention to the world, and to each other.
This is one of my favorite things I have ever read on the Toast. Thank you for writing it, and I am so sorry about the loss of your friend.
I also would love to see the entirety of the poem quoted at the bottom of page 2…I like it a lot.
I’ve tried searching for it, and can’t find anything. I agree, it’s very good.
It’s called “Endpapers” by Philip Dacey:
At the end of every storybook, it snows.
The white endpaper has the final word.
“It snowed and snowed” is how our ending goes,
Fay’s and mine, after the magical rose
Has been returned or the marriage vows heard.
At the end of every storybook, it snows.
We love that snow. We wait for it. Suppose
The story’s dull–no matter. What occurred
Can be snowed on. That’s how our ending goes,
Let the old sorcerer know what he knows,
Le the grave child befriend the immortal bird;
At the end of every storybook, it snows.
Sometimes, nature plays tricks at story’s close:
The endpaper’s red or green, and snow’s absurd
But still snow. And snow’s how our ending goes.
I read my daughter a book. it’s one of those
Full of wonders, but none leaves us more stirred
Than that at every story’s end, it snows.
We laugh. Our joke is snow. That’s how it goes.
Thank you.
I did find this, by GK Chesterton though:
There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.
Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.
And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.
The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.
Ahh. I like the Chesterton one too! I was also unable to find the originally mentioned poem by searching, but I know my google-fu is weak, so was a bit hesitant to ask. Glad to know it wasn’t just me, and would love to know if anyone else tracks it down.
I even contacted our local reference librarian here at work and she found nada, which means that it’s a very obscure title indeed.
This is exquisite. I know I will remember this essay forever and come back to it.
I’m of an age now where my oldest friends are trickling away on me. The worst is thinking you still see them, or hear their voices. They really do leave a hole in your life.
Although I don’t know Ms. Minturn, we did share a friendship with Kevin. This was heartbreaking to read and spot on. Thank you for writing this. It meant more to me than you will ever know.
as someone who has struggled deeply with depression, and who comes from a family who struggles with it, every word feels like it’s clinging tightly to my skin, hanging on and refusing to let go. thank you, for writing this.
This was so moving and full of beautiful crystalline images. I am glad to have read it.
Thank you so much for this. It is so beautifully written, so honest, and incredibly synesthetic. My best friend died suddenly last June, reading this, I could feel myself right there with you, and at the same time, enveloped in the heat and emotions and sense of where I was in the weeks after my own friend’s passing. Hard to put into words how comforted this made me feel.
I knew Kevin when he was working in the Midwest. Such a quiet man, such a good man. He always intimidated me a little, he was always so dapper, so in control of things. I never guessed at the demons wrestling inside him. Thanks for writing about him and providing us with a glimpse into his life, and especially into his last days. He was lucky in having your friendship.
All the pictures of Grounds made this hit me harder than it would otherwise. This is a beautiful piece.
Oh my goodness this is so beautiful and so true and so so sad. I love several people with depression and hope never to lose them to their sadness. “Stay” is my mantra when any of my people are in an especially sad place, but “don’t get dead” just might enter the rotation 😉 Thank you, Molly.
I remember reading Waldo’s report of Kevin’s death four years ago, from a new desk at a new job, having just finished a stint as a lit mag editor. I’m reading Molly’s essay today in an almost identical context. There’s no way to be wise about suicide, or to draw neat lessons from the sudden loss of a friend. But a reader you’ve never met might find some kind of bookends for a thing as limitless as grief from an experience that couldn’t have been easy to write, let alone to live. This is a beautiful essay. What a gift to Kevin, Molly, and to all of us here with you.
This is so spot-on, from the dreams to how obvious it all seems afterwards. I’m so sad for you but thank you so much for sharing.
Beautiful articulation Molly! I am so sorry you lost a dear friend but I agree, what a gift to honor Kevin.
Thank you Molly. In July I find myself searching the night skies for my cousin Kevin. Thank you for sharing your memories and your struggles.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Losing a friend to depression is a special pain, harder I think, than an accident. This is lovely
This is a lovely, moving tribute to your friend, and an exquisite piece of writing; thank you for sharing it with us. I am sorry for your loss.
This is beautiful, and so fucking sad. Thank you. I’m sorry. Thank you.
This was gorgeous and sad and incredibly compelling. The writing is lovely, the way the story unfolds feels precisely right and yet also surprising in some of the turns. I didn’t want it to end, and at the same time I was hoping for some relief for the author. It captures such complicated emotions beautifully. I think you’ve done a very giving thing for Kevin, sharing him with so many people.
What a moving, beautiful piece of writing – truths from such a sad experience. I’m sorry for your loss. I fear for those I love who struggle with depression. Thank you for making me think more deeply about their experiences and what they share with me.
The way you remember everything so precisely seems just right. There’s nothing quite like the suicide of a close friend. It stays with you, each word spoken and not. I really loved this–it is a subject close to my heart.
I’m so sorry for your loss. Thanks for writing this…I also struggle with depression and there are days where everything makes me sad and I fear there will never be a time when I’m free of this but I hang on because of friends and family and writing like your essay…it makes it easier to remember that I want to hang on and keep fighting.
Such a difficult subject written with grace and beauty. What you share and where you send us with words is incredible. Thank you. It is a great essay.
it is the dreams that make it hardest, or coming across something you know they'd enjoy and the sudden stab of their absence like a fresh arrow, time after time.
Fine writing with healing salve for those who survive suicide and heartbreak left in wake.
Genoways???
I don’t even know what to say. I’m so moved and I had to take breaks while reading this. You’re a true an artist who writes with such compassion. I’m so sorry for the loss of your friend.
Thank you, all, for the kind and lovely comments. And bless The Toast!
Thank you, all, for the kind and lovely comments. And bless The Toast!
Beautifully written. Bless you.
Beautifully written. Bless you.
Thank you, Molly, for letting me get to know Kevin. You gave him a beautiful gift by letting others know him even though they may never have met him. Now he lives on, at peace, in out thoughts.
I am terrified that I will make people feel like this.