The Press Box - Sportswriter Ivan Maisel on His Son Max, Fatherhood, and Loss

Episode Date: October 28, 2021

Bryan is joined by sportswriter Ivan Maisel to discuss his book about his late son Max, ‘I Keep Trying to Catch His Eye.’ They discuss Max’s childhood and passions, the moment Maisel heard the news that his son might have died of suicide, talk through the grieving process, and touch on his decision to write this book.  This podcast contains sensitive material about suicide. If you or anyone you know has thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Ivan Maisel Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Bacari Sellers podcast tackles the most pressing current events through conversations and interviews with high-profile guests. Building upon his experience in South Carolina government and politics and his experience as a lawyer, Sellers will talk to his guests about all topics from the world of politics. Check out the Bacari Sellers podcast on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Just to note, we're going to talk about suicide on today's podcast. If you or anyone you know has thoughts of suicide, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. at 1-800-273-8255. Hello, media consumers.

Welcome to Pressbox Friday. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here, along with producer Erica Servantes. If you're new around these parts on Monday's press box, my tag team partner, David Shoemaker, and I talk media stuff. And then I do an interview on the Friday show. Today's guest is a big one for me.

He is Ivan Maisel. Ivan has been covering college football since 1987, and I think I've been seeking out his byline, for just about that long, in Sports Illustrated on ESPN.com, and now on a website called On3. Ivan and his wife Meg had a son named Max Maisel. Max stood 65 and weighed 135 pounds. He was a college student, a photography major in upstate New York. When he was 21 years old, Max died by suicide. Though as Ivan reminds us, suicide is an act, not a person. Ivan's new book, I keep trying to catch his eye tells us about Max. It recounts the grieving process that he and his wife and daughters went through.

It's not a self-help type of book. It's a day-by-day, moment-by-moment rendering of grief, one that is wonderfully written, and to use a word Ivan does not, shattering. As Ivan writes, "'A parents' memories of a dead child are like Easter eggs in a video game, with one important distinction. The reward can wobble your knees.'" Here's Ivan Maisel. Ivan, what was your son Max like when he was a kid? Max was a quirky kid, Brian. He was different in the sense that, you know, what we at first thought was cute,

like his ability to recite Dr. Seuss books from memory when he was about three. We began to, we were told was pathological. You know, there was something going on there. And doctors could never quite, pinned down what it was.

You know, we had him poked, prodded, examined, et cetera, and all we got was he's somewhere on the spectrum. You know, thanks a lot. He had trouble with social cues, as kids on the spectrum often do, was very shy.

But, you know, on top of that, behind that wall that he kept up was just a big doughy lump of sweetness. He really cared about people. My wife reminded me the other day we were talking about he he loved Broadway. He loved shows. He loved musicals. He loved comedy. He hated the book of Mormon because he couldn't get past the fact that he thought they were making fun of the Mormons. And he was like 15 years old, you know, but it didn't stop me from laughing.

I said in the book, and I have always said this, but, you know, when he was alive, I said it. You know, his lack of interest in sports was proof that God had a sense of humor. You know, for someone as I did who grew up learning to read on the sporting news and learning to do division by doing earned run averages, Max just had no interest. and but where I was able to connect to him was you know slapstick you know the Marx brothers a Bob and Ray and he developed this really sort of Bob and Ray like sharp dry width that was just perfect and it had to be that way if you if somebody didn't understand and you tried to explain to him what we were laughing about. Max would just thunder, don't explain the joke.

So he was, and more to the point as he got older, began to make friends online. He didn't have a lot of friends at home. Kids were nice to him, but they just, he didn't know how to reach them, but he made friends online playing games. And then found his calling with a camera in his hand. And he became a really good photographer, and that's what he was studying at RIT. Why do you think photography appealed to him so much? Well, I know how he got interested. I don't know why he was interested. I don't know what it was that spoke to him.

But we used to go skiing that my family, extended family, has a house in Colorado. And there was a photographer who had a studio in Steamboat that we just loved his work. and we bought a few pieces that's still hanging our house. And Max was captivated by those and by the photographer, Don Tudor, who was just a tremendously nice man. And when Max was in college, his last spring break, which would have been his sophomore year, 2014, he called me and said, can we go to Steamboat?

I need to take some photos there for photography. you know, and if your kids ask you to do something, especially at that age, and say they want to spend time with you, yeah, yeah, I can do that. So we went out there and he called Don, and this was a big step for Max. He called Don and asked if they could get together. And Don came over. And Max just, this very shy kid was just, you know, they were talking back and forth. And Don was showing him his equipment and how to do things. I texted Meg, my wife, and said, you would not believe this conversation.

He really, whatever it was that spoke to him, it spoke to him. You write in the book, a lot went on between Max's ears, most of which he guarded carefully. What was that like on a day-to-day basis for you? It was hard. It was hard. He put up a shell, and it was out of self-protection. He didn't want to participate. There was a lot of stuff he didn't want to do. He was scared to do.

He had a lot of fears. And he had a, I mean, he had a lot of things he had to deal with. He was allergic to a lot of stuff, which meant he was getting shots. And if you remember what that's like as a child to get shots. And he had to get them regularly. And I just, you know, felt awful about that. There was nothing I could do for him. But it was just a, he was just very quiet and very shy and withdrawn and try to coax him out.

And one of the, I guess regrets is the word, you know, that I wish, I wish I had done a better job. I built a bridge to him through humor. but you know I really only reacted in trying to get him to come over to where I was I didn't do a great job of going to where he was and his interest and you know what it could or should I wish I'd done better with that and his interest at this point are anime video game soundtracks yes stuff like that yeah and anime you know it's I mean I like Looney Tunes is much as, you know, the next boomer. I still watch them and still laugh. And he loved them, you know, and but he graduated into anime. And, and, you know, Brian, part of that is also, when they're teenagers, they don't really want to deal with you, you know. And, and a lot of, especially at the end, Max developed later, matured later emotionally than kids his age. And his last winter break home from college, his junior year, he was more withdrawn than normal. And we

just read that as, okay, you know, he's been late on everything. Now he's asserting independence. And so the four of us would be in the kitchen, the four of us being our girls. And Max was the middle child and we'd be talking Max come in here and he no I'm okay and we just kind of thought you know he's being he's fine he you know he's he doesn't want to deal with us right now okay well you know with the benefit of hindsight you can see he was beginning to you know do the spiral and that was just you know one and many misreads and as you say it's with hindsight because at the time you're trying to disentangle his own issues, being a teenager, being a typical early 20-something who has a very specific relationship with their parents from what you would later discover was

mental illness, essentially. That's exactly it. And we, I have, I won't speak for my wife or my my daughters. I've been fairly pragmatic about, you know, I did the best I could with what what I knew at the time. And, you know, of course, there are do-overs I would like to have. But I don't, I think mental illness is, you know, it's not something that can be changed by, oh, if I had watched more anime with him, you know, he'd be here today. I mean, you know, that's remarkably, it's understandable for people to think that way.

I get that. but mental illness is a lot more insidious than that and a lot tougher to defeat. So I don't have a lot of guilt in that sense. The one issue with guilt that I do have is if you screw up with your children, you can make it up. I mean, like you have a, you know, you handle, even now with our adult daughters. You know, it's like they're like friends now and you sometimes with friends, you screw up. you make up. But, you know, our bowl of memories with Max is, there's nothing new to put in it.

You know, I love for people, you know, one of the people would say to me, well, we didn't want to bring him up to you after he died. And you want people, you want to talk about him. It keeps him present. And, you know, my memories and my interactions with him are finite. Somebody else comes to me with a memory, that's something new to me. You know, his fourth grade teacher the other night started telling me about him in the colonial play. You know, we live in New England.

So, of course, in fourth grade, there's a colonial play. And she, you know, 20 years, well, yeah, I guess it would be almost 20 years later. She remembers him and how well he did and how the way, what he did, as Patrick Henry, mind you, impress the other children. And, you know, and that's kind of stuff that's just goal. to us these days. So it's as you say, getting away from the simple idea of regret, but dealing with the idea that these things are all permanent record, that relationship is not going to change

and develop and over time. Yeah, I mean, it's, sure, I would, that's, and that's the saddest part of it. Well, not the saddest part, but that's, that's on the metal stand of one of the saddest parts of it. You know, it's just, you don't get to do anything new. So he gets through high school in Connecticut, goes to the Rochester Institute of Technology in upstate New York, where he studies photography, as we mentioned. Your hope for him there was what? Get through.

I mean, what we hoped is that he would find his people in college because he didn't find him in high school and that he would mature, come out and be able to find something that he could do that would engage him. And Max had such anxiety about would he be able to do the work in college. And then it became in those last weeks he was really struggling with, I'm not going to be able to get a job. I'm not going to be able to graduate. You know, his professors after he died told us he was doing fine. And it was one professor in particular who I wrote about in the book that really took a shine to Max and really.

kept an eye on him and thought he was making terrific progress. What happened in February 2015? What happened? And I answered the phone one night. It was a terrible winter in New England. And I was a Monday night. Meg was out. Our youngest was a senior in high school. She was upstairs. The house phone rang. And it was a sheriff from Monroe County where Rochester is. And he said, is Margaret Murray there? He was my wife. And I said, no, can I help you?

I'm her husband. And he said, well, we found a car of hers parked at the pier at Lake Ontario in Greece, you know, in Rochester, at the edge of, you know, at the shore in Rochester. and I knew what had happened. You know, I just knew that that park is a mile east of Meg's, my wife, Meg's brothers' summer home where we had gone every summer. Max has been in that park every summer, you know, for the previous 15 or 20 years. One of the reasons he went to RIT was he felt comfortable in Rochester. He used to take photos in that, you know, of the lake from there.

He, you know, that was his turf. And I knew what had happened. You know, the policeman, excuse me, the sheriff subsequently, we learned it was an awful night somewhere around zero when whipping. But there was a local resident who was just sitting in the. parking lot in his truck, watch Max get out of his car and walk to the pier. And 45 minutes later, he hadn't come back. So this guy goes to a convenience store around the corner and says, I just saw something that I think is kind of odd. And they talk about it. And he called, thank God, he called 911. And, and that. And that's...

And then the horror show began. You talk so much about your feelings in this book over the next months and years after that night. Can you go back now with six years' distance and isolate what your feelings were in that moment when you get the phone call from the sheriff? Well, I just knew Max was dead. And then it's just sort of scrambling trying to maintain. your balance. I used to wake up those first days. I woke up every morning before dawn and I would just, you know, vomit into this laptop, you know, all my emotions and feelings. And that was how I grieved. And the first, the first weeks, they weren't even complete sentences. You know, the first

couple of weeks, that was just my mind couldn't really stop on any one thing. And, uh, You know, our extended families, mine mostly from Alabama and Meg's, mostly from upstate New York, all congregated in Rochester. And it became evident to me within those first three or four days, Brian, that I was going to have to be the leader of this, of the family's vigil. And that's not a normal place for me. That's not a normal role for me. I'm the youngest of three, and I was the youngest cousin. I mean, I was always sort of told what to do. And I could tell as we, you know, that they were all kind of looking at me for,

well, what do we do now? And it took the police maybe three or four days to develop enough. evidence to begin to think that my and Meg's supposition was right that Max had done this willfully and they developed enough evidence by going through his credit cards to figure out that there was something there and so then we had to figure out how are we how are we going to tell the extended family and that's when i kind of realize they're all going to watch me to see how I respond. And my response was just put it all out there.

And that's been my stance ever since. And mainly it was out of self-preservation because I had all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. You know, as I said, I couldn't even speak in complete sentences at that point. And now I was going to have to figure out, you know, who was in the cone of silence and who was going to know everything. You know, shit, the last thing I wanted to do was being in a. sign, you know, a CIA assignment, you know, status assignment guy. So I just said, put it,

you know, tell everybody everything. You know, as a journalist, I wanted to do that. I wasn't going to no comment anybody if I could help it. And, and it's also healthier. Mental illness needs sunlight. And I didn't want anybody to mistake any reticence or lack of comment on. on our part to interpret that as we were ashamed of Max. He was sick, you know, and that was, it really wasn't that hard of a decision. You write in the book that by sharing that information, as you did, you make it from your burden, you turn it from something that's your burden, as you say, to who am I telling, who, you know, I'm keeping this inside, the feelings involved with that to their burden if they

have a problem or a reaction with that. It's almost a transference from one place to the other. Yeah. I mean, if there is stigma attached, I was not going to take that on. That was going to reflect on the person that, you know, believe there was stigma. And believe me, I didn't care. I mean, I, you know, it was just so awful at that point. The last thing I was worrying about was, you know, what we looked like or what people thought. Although, although as a how, As I wrote in the book, I did spend one afternoon. I went to a grocery store a few towns over because I knew no, I didn't have to worry that anybody would look at me as the dad of that kid in the newspaper.

And that was like, that was almost like intoxicating. You know, I just like, God, this is great. This is like my old life, you know, but I kind of knew that high was only going to last until I got back in the car and went home. You know, I didn't try to do it again. I can go up and down the aisles and nobody's going to be looking at me and imputing thoughts to me and all that kind of stuff. Exactly. My father killed himself when I was 11 years old.

And one thing I remember about that, period, is just the way people reacted to seeing that news, you know, to learning that fact. What did you notice about the way people reacted, especially as you began to tell people that were outside your family? Well, I think we as a society are better about that now. everybody's beginning certainly then then when your father ended his life and and certainly in my childhood you know you didn't talk about it and and when you did talk about it it was uh you ascribe shame to that person or to that family uh you know which is just it's just so embarrassing now that we know what we know um people blanche when you bring it up and And I, you know, I play a lot of golf.

And, you know, your conversations on the golf course with guys you don't know is, well, you know, tell me about your family. And I thought, I don't know, I'm not going to pretend Max didn't exist. And I'm not going to say, you know, I'm not going to worry about whether this guy can handle what I tell him. I'd say it very even-handed. I don't you know the problem for me is that I don't talk about my children chronologically the way that we always do you know I say I have two daughters they're 29 and 24 and we had a son between them he died at age 21 six years ago he ended his life he was in a spiral and we didn't know it and and we lost him and and I don't say it I just keep my tone very even

and because it's the truth. And they usually manage to get out, I'm really sorry. And they, you know, run to their ball. But some don't. I mean, some actually are, you know, I'm really sorry, you know, and ask me questions. And of course, I'm more than willing to talk about him. And for reasons we discussed. So, but usually it takes people aback.

Yeah, I was never embarrassed about it or ashamed of it, but I always felt I was laying something heavy on somebody who didn't see it coming or who might not have asked for that kind of emotional, you know, blow at that moment. Well, yes. And that's why I try to say it very evenhandedly. And I always thought, well, I'm sorry to dump that on you. but, you know, if you think it's tough, you know, imagine what it's been like for me. And, you know, I don't really, you know, I'm sorry that, you know, I made you feel uneasy, but, you know, so what? You had a memorial service for Max. How did you decide what you were going to say and how you were going to describe his life there? Meg helped me, you know, Meg, who just loved, you know, a mom and her. son. Meg knew, Meg understood Max and knew him so much better than I did. You know, some kids go,

you know, it's just natural. And the mother's son thing was, was really special to, you know, between them. I just decided I was going to tell stories about him and, and, you know, I didn't want him to be defined by how he died. I thought this is my opportunity to define. To define. him by who he was and how he lived. And I wanted to do that at the Uly, you know, wanted to do that eulogy at the service for that reason, Brian. And I also wanted to do that eulogy so our daughters would understand that we were going to talk about Max in public and that we were not, we don't want to hide who Max was. And in the days, leading up to the service, I made sure to, I sat them down and said, I need to practice this.

I want you to listen to it. And I did need to practice it, but I also wanted them to hear what I was saying because they were going to say something too. And I wanted them to know, it's okay to talk about Max. And they both told great stories about him at his expense and made people laugh. and that's how it should be. You know, the memory should be good. One thing I really liked about the book was how you're able to so vividly describe grief

by moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, but then also hold it at a little bit of a remove and think about it as an idea. When were you able to do the latter? That's a great question. It took a few weeks for me to realize that it wasn't going away. and that I had to get used to carrying it. The poet Edward Hirsch wrote a wonderful poem about his son Gabriel, who died. And he described grief as carrying a bag of cement up a hill that never ends.

And I found great meaning in that, you know, understanding that my grief was always going to be right here. and that I just had to get used to the weight of it. That really helped me. And then as I began to think about the amount of pain I was in, it just occurred to me that the amount of pain that you feel when you lose someone close to you is equal to the amount of love you had for that person. And that was just sort of clicked in my head. just made everything make sense.

And if there's no other message that I get, that I deliver in this book, it's that grief is love. That it's a very painful form of love. But for me, understanding that I felt this way because I loved Max just made it easier to deal with. And rather than stiff arm it, which I had done with grief my whole life,

lean into it and let it happen and understand that whatever pain I felt was as intense as it was temporary and that it would receive it would come back and it still does but it would receive and that we would experience joy again if I feel this bad it's because I love him that much exactly it's a one-to-one relationship that's what worked for me your mileage may vary you know i mean that that really made a lot of sense to me and it helped me immensely and one other you know one thing another thing i learned about grief is everybody does it differently and and uh i couldn't meg wanted to know every single detail about max's last weeks and in days and hours.

And I didn't have the stomach for that. You know, that was just too painful for me. But she needed to know. And I just, you know, you go put your hand on that stove every day, honey, you know, and tell me how hot it is.

And, uh, but she let, you know, we didn't judge each other. And I think that's the critical part of, of a marriage surviving. It's not, you know,

that idea is not new to me. David Kessler, who I quote in the book, said, it's not the death of the child that causes parents to split up. It's the fact that they judge each other's grief. And we decided early on that we were going to not judge each other's grief because when we first started dating in 1983, we both read Frank DeFord's book about his daughter Alex, who had died of cystic fibrosis. And Frank and Carol DeFord made a deal that they wouldn't cry. at the same time.

And we, first week, we established the DeFord rule between us. And that helped a lot. You mentioned leaning into pain a second ago. What did that mean on a daily basis? Well, it just meant accepting it. You know, I am a master. I spent my first 55 years avoiding conflict and not doing anything I would consider painful, you know, avoiding pain. I, but you can't, you can't stiff arm grief. You know,

you have to get it out if you don't. And we told the girls this, you know, if you don't get it out when you want it to, it's going to come out when it wants to and that may not be convenient for your life. So it was just accepting the fact that. that I was going to be in a lot of pain for a while. And when my father died in 2007, which was seven plus years before Max, I refused to acknowledge that I was going to lose him. I kept thinking, well, he'll get better, he'll get better. And I did myself a disservice.

I did him a disservice. I did my kids a disservice by not accepting the fact that he was dying and teaching them to it. accepted. And that was a, you know, another would or could or should have. During the months and years after Max's death, you found yourself talking to him a lot. What kinds of things did you say? I would just say, and I still do this. I would just tell him, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I couldn't help you more. I'm sorry you were in such pain. You know, we really miss you.

you know and it's I mean I don't know what else to say to him but I want to you know I just would tell him that we were doing everything we could we would have done anything for you if we had known to do it and you know that's

I'm just saying that into the into the ethos, I guess. I sure it's for my own benefit. Maybe he hears it somewhere. You mentioned sitting down at a computer and writing about your thoughts starting in early mornings. What led you to do that? Is that Ivan, the journalist coming out? Is that what is it? It's the most facile and best way I have of getting out my thoughts. and the least, as I said, I'm not very good at conflict. And I didn't want, you know, I knew Meg and the girls were, you know, I didn't want to, I don't want to add to their pain by just dumping all of my stuff on them.

So this was a way just to get it out. and you know and I'm you know in terms of expressing my emotions I think with my fingers you know and I don't know about you I think that might be an occupational hazard or or quality perhaps rather than hazard you know but I it was just a way to sort of get it out and you know at the beginning I was doing it most mornings and it just gradually tape you papered off over about 18 months. And I had it all in my laptop. So when I finally decided to write, you know, that was very helpful because it took me back to

what I was feeling then. Some of it was just diary and baloney and, you know, this is what happened today. But a lot of it was intimate and interior and I would never that I was stuff I would have never remembered. You published a couple of pieces about Max's death, including one from Medium, in 2018 that went viral. How did a piece like that going viral make you feel? Well, it made me feel gratified.

And it sort of planted the seed in my head that, well, maybe, you know, maybe at some point I'll write a book. You know, um, uh, that was, that was, that really felt good, Brian, to be honest with it. Just that people responded to it. And, uh, I had, I had published the ULULULU. on medium because people asked me for a copy of it and I thought well I'll just put it out there and then I wrote an essay a year after he died and then I just had some thoughts and it's really the genesis of the title of the book I was looking at the wallpaper photo on my phone one day and it's

a it's a picture from Sarah our oldest college graduation of the three kids and the girls are looking right at the camera and Max is looking up in a way to the right. And I'm and I'm just looking at my phone thinking, look at me. You know, look at, look at the camera. You know, but he hated getting his, he hated getting his picture taken. So I keep trying to catch his eye. You also talk right about this process. It began really in 2016 where you are balancing the life. You are continuing to live with your duty to keep him close to you in some way. You're right. I want to keep going, but I don't want to leave him behind. How does that play itself out?

Well, you have to leave him behind. I didn't want to, but, you know, every fiber of your body wants to just get into the fetal position and stay there and stay where he was. But if you do that, then you lose again because you're not opening yourself up to what else is out there. I had enough of a sense of, I don't know if it's. It's Buddhist thinking, but I knew just because this one really bad thing had happened to me, that didn't mean that everything that happened to me from then on out was going to be bad. They were still going to be good things that happened. And if I just withdrew and just stayed there in that very comfortable and warm fetal position,

then I was going to miss stuff again. You know, our nephew got married two weeks after Max's body surfaced in Lake Ontario. And we were not really interested in celebrating. But I, we were not really interested in celebrating, but I wanted, I thought we had to go because if we didn't go, we'd miss that. you know, that's more joy we would miss. And if we didn't go, it'll be, maybe this is egotistical,

but, you know, our nephew's wedding, we would not have, you know, they would always remember, well, that, yeah,

they couldn't come or wouldn't come or didn't come. So we went and, you know, Meg hated every second of it. And I got out there and it sort of went, you know, fake it until you make it. And,

and that, but that was sort of the philosophy that I wanted to pursue. He continued to go out to eat on his birthday every year? Yes, we, yes, we do. Max was a renowned eater of just junk, you know, loved hamburgers, hated buns. He was the pickiest of eaters. He ate his, and just awful, he would eat his steak and his hamburgers medium well.

I mean, just gray. and big on sugared cereal. He did love apples and Martinelli's apple juice. I went to school with John Martinelli, so that was always in our house. But on his birthday, which is in January, Meg and I will go, if we're at home, we go to his favorite burger place,

and if wherever we are, we go to the, you know, just to eat the big, biggest, you know, gut bomb of a burger we can find with fries in his honor. I want to ask you about one point of journalism that's within this book. There's a big story in college football, which is your beat. In 2018, Tyler Hulensky, the Washington State quarterback, died by suicide. Now, your college football writer, that's the kind of story you might pursue. What did you think when you saw that news?

Well, he died in January of 18, and as soon as a thought of the news, I just went oh my God, you know, I'm going to have to deal with this at some point as a journalist. And I shuddered because what I didn't want to do was the, you know, the TikTok, you know, the, you know, this is how Tyler Kalinsky ended his life. I even I thought that was intrusive. And I knew somebody, I knew the story needed to be told. I just didn't have the stomach to do it. And so I just sort of slow played it.

And thank God, Greg Bishop at SI did it. and did a terrific job. And so I thought, okay, that box is checked. And a week or two later, Drew Gallagher, the producer at Game Day, you know, contacted me and said, you know, we want you to do something about Tyler Holinsky. And, you know, I said, okay. And I'm thinking to myself, well, I've been in this company 13 years

and Game Day hasn't asked me to do much. So we all know why they're asking me to do the story, right? And I said, Drew, look, I get it. It makes perfect sense. But if I'm going to do it, then, you know, write what I know. Let me do a story about the parents because that's why you're asking me is because I'm, I'm knowledgeable about this. And that's what I'm knowledgeable about.

So I contacted Mark Kalinsky and just sort of wrote him an email and laid everything out and just said, I think I know a little bit about where you are. And I called him. and he answered and we talked for an hour in 10 minutes and they trusted me and that was such a gift to me that they trusted me and Lauren Sol who was a terrific producer at Game Day you know did just a wonderful job of putting the piece together and what I came out of that with was a good story but Meg and I and Mark and Kim Holinsky are our friends now and support one of another as we go down this, you know, road we don't want to be on.

What prompted you to finally write this all down in a book? Oh, as I said, the response to the medium piece that you brought up, you know, that germ was planted, you know, that seed was planted in, in my head. And I kind of began to think it's time, you know, a perspective. I had the perspective to be able to write it. I had my legs under me emotionally to be able to write it clear-headedly. And then in January of last year of 20, I had lunch with a college friend of mine that I had worked on the paper, this college paper with. And she lives in Chicago.

And she almost came over the table at me. When are you going to write about math? And I thought, well, I have been thinking about it. And the universe provided. I mean, I hate, I hate thanking the, you know, the pandemic, but all of a sudden I didn't have a whole lot to do. So wrote a proposal and sent it to my agent and she read it. And she said, she called me.

God bless her. She said, this is really well written, but it reads like you're writing about somebody else. And I thought, well, yeah, that's what I do. You know, she said, I want to read about you and Max. That's what the story is. That's what everybody wants to know about. You know, and it was like, oh, you know, I didn't argue with her. I just went, oh, of course.

And, you know, you know how long a book proposal is. I rewrote it in a weekend because it was like, I just, instead of standing here, I took three steps over and turned my body a little bit and looked at it from there. And I went, oh, okay. And boom, we were off. You write that in the acknowledgments that you obtained Meg's emotional permission to write the book. What did what did that entail? Well, I mean, and that's that's the truth. You know, they, they have been very, they being Meg and Sarah and Elizabeth, our daughters have been indulgent of me being public.

And as I said, grief is individual. And everybody does it differently. And by my being public, they have become public. And they've been very good about it. When I finished the manuscript, I handed it. I handed it. I emailed it to each of them. Said, all right, let me know. And Sarah, who is a good editor, you know,

she made some editorial suggestions. And Meg, there were, couple of parts of it that she that I really pissed her off you know that I had just misinterpreted something she had done and and I said okay I'll fix it and if I and if you don't like the way I fixed it I'll take it out and if you don't like that I'll send them the advance back it's not that you know this book is not gonna get in the way and she's been a terrific supporter ever since and so is Elizabeth but you know that they,

uh, and I'm still checking in with them. You know, Elizabeth, the literal eve of publication, which was Monday night, the 25th, uh,

I sat down with Elizabeth. I said, how are you doing with all this? You know, you're okay. And she said, well, you know,

I dreamt about Max last night. I said, I dreamt about him a couple nights ago. And we started talking about our dreams. And, it's hard for her. She's a much more private individual, but she's been very good about it. I'll close on that note, Ivan. When do you think about Max these days? Not as much as I wish I did. You know, that's the sad part of it, Brian. Your life goes on.

You know, I brought him with him as much as I can. And I like to sit there and think about who he would be now at age 27, almost 28. But, I don't know. And I'll never know. And that's, that's just really sad. Ivan Maisel, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much to Ivan Mayzell. Again, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline can be reached at 1-800-273-8255. I'm Brian Curtis. The producer of this podcast is Erica Cervantes. Dave and I are back Monday. Have a great weekend.