Oh The Places You'll Go OR How the Dead Helped Me Ace High School

Classmates, Parents and Family, Teachers and Honored Guests, I have been asked to deliver this speech on this day of our graduation. I have the highest GPA, so I get to speak. This speech will be more like a confession. (pause) I am number one in our class for a reason. (a longer pause with a dry cough cough) I cheated.

(murmurs and mumbles with a hint of rage and disbelief)

I cheated all of you for the past four years, and I did it with the help of my family. My dead family

(the crowd buzzes and hums and snickers into silence.) (After the longest pause)

I was going to give a lovely speech centered around Dr. Suess’s book, Oh the Places You'll Go. But I scrapped that idea last night when the ghost of my great uncle kept me up after begging me to listen to his story. My great uncle has been dead for 62 years. Should be a good story, right?

(the crowd agrees a bit)

It wasn’t good last night. It was interesting the first time I heard it, but I have heard it hundreds of times. First wife died. Second wife died. Police investigated. Seems there was foul play. Great uncle dies in prison. The end. I’ll skip all the gloomy details and the sobbing.

Why did he kill his second wife? I don’t know. He never has a good explanation for that. It’s probably because he did it. Guilt. The dead are fueled by it. Technically, his wife was my aunt, but she’ll never tell me her side of the story. Only blood relatives can come to me. Who made those rules? I have no idea, and the dead either don’t know who or they are sworn to keep that a secret. My great uncle, like all of my dead relatives, forgets he told me his story the very second he finishes telling it to me. And so he told it to me three more times. I was up all night (which is typical) I had no time to write the Dr. Seuss speech. I'll just wing it. So sit back everybody; this speech might take a while. There are so many dead family members, you know? And they all have a lot to say.

(The crowd becomes silent despite their indignation. They are intrigued.)

I became an orphan when my dad died four years ago. And so I was shuffled off to foster care, and the committee was assembled. It seemed I had no more living blood relatives. I was an only child and so were my parents. There were bigger families back in the days when my relatives all came to the US from Russia (from the same little town they all reunited here in Baltimore). But lives were cut short or they were too poor or…who knows? But by time they got to me, only my parents kept the dead away.

Once they “crossed over,” the visits started.

At first it was remarkable and emotional and terrifying. To see the dead I knew in life and the dead I had never met was shocking (to say the least).

But they were all just like my uncle. They had a story, and they wanted to tell me. Needed to tell me. I became their audience. I was their only connection to their human lives, so I get to “absolve them” of their guilt. Only there is no absolution. The guilt is the only thing keeping them stitched together. I was trapped like you are now, imprisoned by my fascination and by the fact that nothing I did could ever get rid of them.

They spoke to me in my many foster care homes, outside as I walked to school, on the light rail, at the bus stop, at my job scooping ice cream. Everywhere I went, one or two or ten of them would claw and scratch to get to me. I could help them set things right. I could calm them. Let them find peace. HA! (she laughs, loud and alone.) There is no peace for the dead, I can tell you that right now for sure. We’re all guilty of something, and that little “crime” of ours will just spin and spin like a malfunctioning carousel in the minds of the dead. For how long? Forever, I guess.

(The audience rumbles a bit, scared of that immortal potentiality)

Even while I sleep, they never stop. Aunts and cousins and even my niece (who died of brain cancer at six years old). There is no way of really knowing them. Even the ones I knew when they were alive are unknowable now. Death changes you. And yet I can't let them go. There are words I can't translate without them. There are maps I can't read. There are things that happen inside of my head that I can't understand until one of them stumbles into my bedroom and sits down to tell me. There’s also all of the school work. My dead relatives helped me with every single essay or math problem or reading assignment I ever had to do. Really, I'm a talentless idiot. I am standing here today because death found me and won’t let go.

(pin drop)

Because what I discovered was that the dead wanted so badly to tell me their stories they would do anything I asked. My ears were conditional. So they became my team. I had one driving goal: valedictorian. Yes. Just that. And here I am, ranked number one over all of you. Am I smarter than Betsy Wagner or Rodney Kairo or Jahsinda or Ethan or you, Moe, my only friend throughout all of my nightmares? No way. I promise you, I am not smarter than three quarters of you. My real class rank should have been 256 out of 312. Maybe 255…but not a notch higher. Nope. So how did I do it? How did I fool everyone and leapfrog to the top? Hmmm?

My mom died when I was eight and my dad died four years ago. Right before I entered 9th grade. It's almost as if the dead who died before and after I was born wouldn't let my parents live. They needed them. Once they were both dead, the alliance was sworn in.

The first one to come to me was my Dad. He came the night of his funeral. There was no family to speak of, except two of my great uncles on my father’s side (the murderer was my mother’s uncle) had wives, widows stayed close to each other and spoke to my father from time to time, inviting the two of us for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Sometimes we went, and sometimes we stayed at home and acted like they didn’t exist. When they heard my dad died, they reached out and helped me with the process. Papers to be signed and someone to inspect the body were just two of the many things they did. The only thing they couldn’t do was give me a home. That’s how I wound up in six different foster care families.

(I don’t want to tell you about my father’s guilt. It hurt to hear it. He was mostly a good man. Mostly.)

So how did I whip all of your asses in High School? Mock Trial MVP? Star of the Drama Club? Chess Champion? World Class Debater? All of these goals were reached because of my dead relatives. My cousin who died at 26 was well on her way to becoming a celebrated physicist. My great great grandfather fought in World War I and II. My grandmother baked. My father was an accountant. I had all of my bases covered. And what did I have to do to earn all of this “tutoring?” I had to listen to their damned stories, over and over again.

At school, whenever we had a test and the teacher directed us to separate our desks, I would bring four or five of my dead relatives to peek over the shoulders of the brightest kids. My family would just tell me the answers the other kids got. I was the only one who could hear them. It was easy. (snap snap)

Of course I would have to spend the rest of the class pretending to listen to the teacher when all I heard were those same relatives telling me their stories….all at the same time! So much noise, but it was worth it to grind you all into the dust of my ascension. (smile)

I am surrounded by my dead family. They are all here. Thousands of them. Tongues wrapped around their guilt, telling their stories even as I speak this speech. Can you feel them? Can you HEAR them? Just be quiet for a moment. Button your lips and prick up your ears. (The room fell silent.) Listen. Lean forward. (And they did, but no one heard anything)

Of course you can’t hear them. Your family has life. Their roots are still planted. Your blood lines float in all different directions. But I am a lonely tree. I am alone in a garden of dead things. And thousands of stories are all praying to keep me alive. I will listen to them. I just don’t know who will ever listen to me.

I guess it’s you. Thanks for that.

(pause)

Happy Graduation! My dead are here, all around you, just waiting for me to walk off of this stage and fall straight into their dry and hungry mouths.

(silence)

(applause)

(The dead descend)