The Obituary

When reporting on suicide, the CDC advises against including the suicide method or overly positive descriptions of the deceased for fear of causing contagion.

Which gave Reporter Jane a problem in reporting on how her dad did what he did. She can't mention the means, so readers will be left to wonder:

Was it a gun? A rope? A razor? Pills? Poison? A train? A hair-dryer?

And (according to the CDC), the mildly suicidal among them will begin to salivate.

Starvation? Inflammation? Suffocation? Tailpipe down the throat? Rocks in the pocket, head in the oven, was it something he held in his hand? Was it cool, was it heavy, was it sharp, did it shake? Or was there no object at all, just sneakers, a leap.

Would there be some way to hint at the spectacular nature of his departure? How sci-fi and fantastical it was? If she were to drop some clue like, say, "He took his exit from this world in a truly bizarre fashion," what would they picture?

A beehive? An industrial vat? A guillotine... powered by a Rube Goldberg Machine? Perhaps they'd picture piranhas or trapeze or bears? A majestic last sleigh ride onto thinning ice!? Did he, what. . .hug a leper? Snuggle a python? Can't say. Can't say.

So! She will start with his mustache. Safe enough, right? Just a few hundred bristles of hair. White and friendly like Captain Kangaroo. Full. Push brooms everywhere—across wooden floors, across linoleum, across tile—made her smile. He was a dendrochronologist, a counter of tree rings, an obsolete science made useful again when it was realized that in tree rings you could catch history. He'd climb up the mountains in Nevada to where the thousands-year-old bristlecone pines gathered, and delicately extract cores—like a surgeon, careful not to injure his gnarled and piney old patient—patting its trunk, maybe even kissing its bark, whispering perhaps, and breathing steady as he slid it out. And later, in the lines on those cores, where they swelled or darkened, he could see evidence of floods or droughts or fires, tall tales confirmed or refuted by those lines, suggesting that time was perhaps not as relative as Einstein thought but concrete, at least here on Earth, and catch-able in its trees.

But is that too much? Will people read into dendrochronology too much of his gentleness? His love of the world? Will they feel in their chests admiration? Admiration, according to the CDC, is a dangerous substance. Sheer admiration, the CDC has found, can kill. The more beloved the deceased, the stronger the chance of copycats. There have been Studies. It has been Shown.

So she will keep all that inside. She'll say simply that he was a dendrochronologist and not define it so it seems horrible and dull. A dendrochronologist born in Connecticut (who admires Connecticut? No one!). He leaves behind a wife and three daughters.

Can she speak a bit about his fathering? Perhaps. He was a fabulous father, he let them eat sugar cereal only once a year on what he called Candy Day. And on that day they were allowed to eat. . .ONLY SUGAR. Oh, you think you're gonna put MILK in those Lucky Charms, hunny? Think again, it's gotta he CHOCOLATE milk on Candy Day! His theory was they'd get so ill, they'd never want sugar again—he was a scientist, did she mention that?—but it never worked. Every year he tried it again, tweaking a variable here—more Skittles—or a variable there—no water allowed!—but it never worked. Just rainbow-colored vomit and whining through their sugar crashes to ask how long it was till next year's Candy Day. He begged them to come grocery shopping with him because he, for some reason, seemed to actually enjoy their presence, bobbling alongside his cart. He made them kites and forts. He let them play with fire. He cut his own jean shorts. But as she eked into her twenties, she noticed...