When my grandfather died in June we said it was because he couldn’t bear to see the designated hitter come to the National League. It was a pretty good joke my family repeated too many times in the days that followed his passing because it made us chuckle instead of cry and almost made it feel like there was some order to the senselessness that accompanies any death.
We needed ways to talk about his absence that soothed the shock without ignoring the loss. The blunt-force fact of his death was still so present and painful it didn’t need the embellishment of all the ways it would come to affect our lives.