A week ago Monday, I got a phone call that was identical — almost — to dozens I’d received before: My uncle Gary, my father’s younger brother, was being rushed to the emergency room at UConn John Dempsey Hospital, in Farmington, Connecticut. But I sensed this alert was different. Usually, it would be Gary himself calling me, from his Amazon Alexa, but instead I was speaking with a nurse at the rehab center where he’d spent the month since his last hospitalization.

Now, she was saying, his breathing was weak, he might have pneumonia. “He’s not responding as we’d like,” she said.

Did that mean he was non-responsive? I asked.

She mumbled a kind of agreement, then repeated herself: Gary was not responding as they’d like.

An hour or two later, as I was walking from a haircut to a burrito shop, a UConn doctor called me and laid out what he was seeing: A 76-year-old man, blind, with lifelong cerebral palsy and open wounds on his backside — bedsores that, because he had lost so much muscle mass, went straight to and infected the bone — was now being hospitalized with sepsis, for the umpteenth time in the past two years. Gary was weak, he said, with no energy reserves. He could not currently speak. Gary had a DNR order. He did not wish to be intubated. The hospital could, the doctor said, give him IV antibiotics, but in his state, this might only barely prolong the inevitable. Hospice care, he said, would make more sense. But I was Gary’s designated legal health care representative. It was up to me to decide.

Could I decide the next morning, I asked, when my parents and I would come to visit?

Yes, he said, but Gary realistically might have only 24 to 48 hours left.

I asked him to start hospice care. Four hours later, I was at Gary’s bedside in Connecticut.

🪨

When I was a very little kid, I didn’t know what to make of Gary. He wasn’t always around his parents’ house in Bridgeport when I’d visit for summer vacation, and if he was, I couldn’t relate to him. All I wanted was to play with Legos and Star Wars figures, and all he seemed to want was to listen to baseball games on the radio. With his crutches, his wheelchair, his thick glasses, he scared me a bit. I didn’t understand how he fit into our family of academic wanderers.

It wasn’t until I was in my early twenties and newly installed in New York that he and I started to figure out how to communicate. Since 1986, he had been a resident at New Horizons Village, an independent-living community for the disabled near Farmington, so I’d take the train up to see him from time to time, like for his 50th birthday, a wild afternoon of dancing and karaoke². And he began to call me on the phone, often seemingly at random, just to talk about the news or politics. What did I think of Mayor Giuliani, Mayor Bloomberg, Mayor DeBlasio, Mayor Adams? For a while, he became obsessed with memory challenges — as a blind guy, he’d always had to rely on his memory, and was proud of his recall — so I tried to get him entered into the National Memory Championships. Alas, they wouldn’t take blind entrants.

Still, he’d keep calling, to talk about movies he’d seen and audiobooks he was reading. None of which he liked! “OK, Matt,” he’d say, “explain this to me: Why does everyone talk about…” The Godfather, say, or Toni Morrison. Pick your favorite film, your favorite author — he was probably going to hate them, or at least find them boring. The appeal would escape him. I’d say it was about five thumbs-downs for every thumbs-up. And yet he kept reading and kept watching because, well, he wanted to. It mattered to him to be engaged with the world, and engaged with other people in discussing it. Here’s his reading list as of last week:

And that’s just a partial list! How can anyone keep up with that? Sometimes he’d call me, and I’d see that 860 number on my phone and know that he wanted to get into a lengthy chat about whatever — and I wouldn’t pick up. I just didn’t have his energy.

Moments like that reminded me of a trip we took together back in 2000, when we flew out to Ohio for my brother Steve’s college graduation. We were checking in at Bradley airport, and the woman behind the counter looked at Gary and looked at me, and asked, “Can he talk?” 

And I thought: Oh my god, sometimes he never shuts up!

Through all these phone calls, these visits and trips, these boring novels and overrated movies, I began to get a sense of the scope of Gary’s life. That is, he lived as he wanted to — independently. He had his own tastes, his own ideas, his own friends and routines and pursuits. If I sometimes, or often, didn’t agree with him, that was fine, too. He wasn’t fragile. He built his own world, and invited us all in. He was part of my family, but I was also part of his.

🪨

What do you bring to a death? Forget emotional baggage, medical expectations, theories of the soul — what do you literally carry with you to witness the death of a loved one 120 miles away?

As you know, I pride myself on being prepared for anything. It took only a few minutes to fill a small suitcase with clothing for three or four days — including running gear — and my backpack was already prestocked with cables, a power bank, pens, KN95 masks, a corkscrew, and more. Still, though, I wasn’t ready to go, because: What should I bring to read? My shelves and windowsills were overflowing with options — books I finished a decade ago, books I meant to begin a decade ago, books I bought in March that I swore I wouldn’t start till I was done with the ones I bought in February. Among all these tomes, were there a few on which I imagined I could concentrate? Which might comfort me, or distract me? Which might make the hours of silent waiting ever so slightly more bearable? I chose five, at least one of them at random, and stuffed them in my bag, wondering if I’d crack any open even once.

I drove. I arrived. And there, up on the seventh floor, in a room with a big window showing the soft spring hills of central Connecticut, was Gary, curled up in the hospital bed, accompanied by his friends Ruth and Marie (who was also his longtime health aide). His eyes were closed, his breathing even; he was on morphine for the pain in his wounds, the pain from the arthritis in his hips. Usually, he would have been hooked up to all kinds of tubes and monitoring equipment, but this was hospice: Those measures were no longer necessary.

Ruth explained he could communicate… sort of. He could raise his eyebrows to mean yes, and shake his head to say no, but he was also in and out of consciousness and might not respond at all. Or maybe he just didn’t have the energy. I didn’t say it out loud, but I was imagining that actually Gary was fully aware of what everyone was saying to him, and was just ignoring us, not out of spite or resentment but as a kind of joke, playing the silent patient but waiting to spring on us a signature quip. “What, you forgot the matzoh ball soup?” or “Here’s what I’d say if I could meet Mayor Mamdani.”

If it was a joke, he was dragging it on too long. He remained silent, and after Ruth and Marie left, I carried on my end of the conversation, telling him about my daughters’ high school and college plans and letting him know I’d been laid off from my job. I dipped a swab sponge in his cup of water and let him suck on it; I couldn’t tell if this was intentional or a reflex. Eventually, when there was nothing left to say, I opened my backpack and began reading to him from the books I’d brought. First up was My Brilliant Friend. I wasn’t sure if he’d listened to the audiobook back during the novel’s heyday — or if he’d liked it — but I began the best book of the 21st century in earnest.

I had forgotten its first chapter was all about death:

After ten minutes, I changed gears and brought out Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. Skipping ahead to book nine, when Odysseus recounts the most exciting and supernatural episodes of his travels, I read Gary the story of the Cyclops — how Odysseus brought his men into Polyphemus’s cave, hoping to be treated as a guest (and given treasure!), but instead found himself trapped inside while the one-eyed giant tore his men apart and ate them “like a lion on the mountains, devouring flesh, entrails, and marrow bones, and leaving nothing.” More death, I know, but of a fantastical, impersonal sort. Also, not boring!

Before I got to Odysseus’ clever escape, and the bragging that sealed his fate, I cut my reading short. It was nearing 8 p.m., the end of visiting hours, and I needed to check into a hotel, find dinner, sleep. But I also wanted to leave Gary hanging, anticipating the tale’s colorful conclusion the next day. I wanted him to want to stick around a bit longer.

It did not work out that way. The next day my parents arrived, and instead of reading to Gary, I sat with them at his bedside, chatting with them about the usual things: my daughters, my job search, our summer plans. Every once in a while, we’d talk to Gary directly, remind him we were there, ask a yes/no question to see if he’d respond. Mostly, he didn’t. Sometimes I’d put my hand on his head — his hair was cut very short, and the warmth emanating from him felt so vital, so easy, so familiar.

We were waiting for Gary to die. It’s hard to put this any other way: We were waiting for him to die. It was horrible. We did not want it to happen, yet we knew it would, and while we didn’t want it to happen any sooner than it was going to, we also did not want it prolonged unnecessarily³. Perhaps some people would spend this time hoping or praying for a miraculous recovery, but that is not the Gross family. The rules of this reality would not be bent. The outcome was predetermined, the timeline a secret. It was horrible, most of all for Gary. But at least he could once again exert the independence he’d cherished all his life, if unconsciously: The end would come when he, and he alone, was ready. The rest of us could do nothing but wait.

I filled the time with logistics. I called the funeral home in Fairfield to arrange services, including a livestream video for his friends at New Horizons, who could not easily make the journey. I sought a rabbi to officiate. Although Gary was proudly Jewish, he did not have connections with the community⁴. Once, my dad told me, Gary had been friends with a local rabbi, but they’d had some kind of falling out. This was unfortunate, I guess, but again I saw it as a barometer of Gary’s independence: He was self-sufficient enough to go on without that friendship, and the rabbi did not see this disabled man as so delicate that the relationship had to be preserved at all costs. Besides, falling out with your rabbi is about the most Jewish thing ever. It was more or less Gary’s bar mitzvah.

I looked for an appropriate restaurant to host a post-funeral “meal of consolation.” I talked to my sister in Seattle and to my brother, who was on vacation with his family in Japan. I tried to send work emails. I put off applying for jobs. My wife and I got in a fight with our 17-year-old daughter that resulted in her not speaking a word to us for five days. I wrote an obituary for the newspapers. I started thinking about the eulogy I would also have to write and deliver. I did not read any of the books I’d brought, although my mom briefly opened The World of Odysseus. Evening came, and I put my hand on Gary’s head again, and my parents and I went to dinner.

Gary died the next morning, April 1, around 4 a.m.

By 7:30, I was again at his bedside. His body was now lying flat, his face relaxed; he looked more like a Gross than ever before. The shape of our heads, the contours of our hairlines, the beaks of our noses and drapes of our earlobes — we share them all. I remember speaking to Gary a bit, though I don’t know what I said. Probably something about how his silent-treatment joke was finally up, or that this conversation was now about as one-sided as it ever gets. I do know that after a while I apologized to him: I had to get my laptop out and start letting everyone know. It was time for logistics again.

And that is what it has been ever since: logistics. Calls and meetings with the funeral home to settle on our options and our schedule (they found us a rabbi). Texting and emailing our family members, and Gary’s friends and aides, to let them know the details, and collecting from them all the photos on their phones, hung on walls, stuffed into drawers. I drove to New Horizons, where the staff told tales of Gary’s long tenure (he was one of their first residents, having moved in on September 8, 1986, the day he turned 36½) and I retrieved from his apartment his Connecticut ID and benefits cards. I drove home to Brooklyn, where nothing had changed — groceries needed to be purchased, dinner cooked, children nagged to do their homework. I ran, I climbed. I went shopping for a black suit. I sat and stared at the TV. I skipped a Passover Seder. My sister flew in for the funeral; my brother and his family couldn’t. I didn’t read anything, but I did go to my book club. I did all the things that needed to be done — because I was (I am) a good son, a good nephew, a responsible boy, but also because logistics are easier than feelings. When this was over, I told myself, I’d have a chance to feel something. I could breathe and… I don’t know. I wouldn’t know until it happened.

Still, though… Throughout all of this, as I made the details of Gary’s remembrance the focus of my days, the emotions would bubble up out of nowhere and threaten to break through. My eyes would well up, my voice crack. At the funeral, delivering the eulogy (which I’ve incorporated into this essay), I stumbled on lines I’d thought were simple and direct, and wasn’t sure how I could go on and finish the sentence. But I did. Somehow I did. I had to.

I’m surely not the first person to talk about the randomness of grief. You think it’s gone away, and then suddenly it’s there, occupying your whole being with a grip that’s irrational and implacable — until it dissipates just as unpredictably. When will it return, you wonder, or will it return at all? Have you held it at bay so long that it’s given up on you, or is it merely playing possum, like Gary silently waiting to spring a surprise on those who thought he’d drifted off or couldn’t raise his voice?

I waited for death. And now I’m waiting for grief.

This essay is, I guess, the final logistical element. The funeral was held Monday, followed by the meal of consolation. My suit is in its garment bag. The staff at New Horizons will be organizing a memorial, but that’s on them now. All I have to do is send these words off into the ether, and I’ll be done. I can feel whatever is left to feel, on grief’s erratic timetable.

🪨

As far as I know, there were only two things Gary dreamed of that he never got the chance to do. One was to live in New York City. Gary loved to discuss New York news, whether he was worrying about safety on the subway — especially about whether my daughters were okay — or tracking political scandals. And I think he wanted to live in New York so that he could claim ownership of that discussion in a way that’s tough to do from Connecticut: He wanted New York news to be his news. He wanted to have something at stake in the schools and the potholes, the bike lanes and the taxes. He wanted to vote. Also, he wanted to go to Yankees games.

The other was to visit Thailand. Why Thailand? Because, he told me (and as always, he told me this several times over the years), he’d heard that the women in Thailand were the most beautiful in the world. I mean, sure! Gary may have been blind, but he had his priorities. And I was not about to argue with him on that one.

And so now I keep thinking: What if he’d been able to achieve those? I like to imagine Gary sitting on a beach in Thailand, a gorgeous girl on one side of him, a towering stack of novels and political memoirs on the other. He’s watching the sunset behind the palm trees, but also listening to a baseball game on the radio. This is exactly when he’d call me up — not to kvetch about the tropical weather or the Yankees but to complain about Mayor Mamdani. That there would be a dream come true for him. He’d be so happy. And so would I. 🪨🪨🪨

My friend Augustine Sedgewick is cohosting this session on “men and their bodies, in the age of body hacking, GLPs, plastic surgery and more.” It’s at NeueHouse Madison Square tonight at 6:30 p.m., tickets are free (and still available), and I am going! Whether or not you are a man¹ and have a body, you are welcome to join.