Page 70 of After His Eulogy
“Yeah.”
“Six weeks for you to decide.”
“Yeah.”
“No Ph.D.”
“No Ph.D.”
He is quiet for a long time.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“I’d been telling myself the Ph.D. would be the thing that survived.”
“I know.”
“I’d been telling myself that whatever else changed, the Ph.D. would be the through-line. I’d been working on it. Doing the work. The seminars. The papers. The exams coming next year.I’d been doing it the whole time, since September, even when I was…“
“I know.”
“And now they are taking it.”
“They are.”
“They are taking the second thing.”
I sit with that. The first thing was me. The second thing is the work. I do not say they are not taking me. I do not say it because saying it would be making the conversation about me, and the conversation is not about me right now. The conversation is about Reed losing the second thing, and my job right now is to let him lose it, on his own desk, with my hands on his shoulders, without me making it about whether I am the third thing. He sits with it.
“Griffin.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t have to come.”
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“I am not asking you to. I am going to lose the Ph.D.either way. I am going to be a guy in a town with a different name with no graduate school and a job I do not know yet. That is what I am going to be. That is what I am asking you to come to. If you come.”
“I know.”
“I do not want you to make the decision out of obligation. Or out of guilt. Or out of… Griffin. There is a version of the next two months where you decide to come because you cannot bear the thought of saying no. I do not want that version. I want you to make the decision because you have looked at the three options and you have decided what you want, and what you want is thethird one. Or the second one. Or the first one. I want you to decide.”
“Reed.”
“Yeah.”
“I am going to decide. I am not going to decide tonight. I have six weeks. I am going to take the six weeks. I am going to think about it. I am going to actually think about it.”
“Yeah.”
“And when I decide, you are going to know that I decided. Not that I drifted into it. Decided.”
