_Goodbye Days_ by Jeff Zentner
Social Customs
I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck." p5
In general, I'd rather be bitten on the nuts by a Komodo dragon than make small talk. But sometimes you do what you have to do. p7
If Sauce Crew had official positions, mine would be Keeper of the Sacred Traditions. I love the idea of the families we choose having all the features of familydom, including traditions. p63
"Child Protection? My heavens, yes. The sheriff? Many times. But we're talking about a rural county with limited resources. They don't do a thing." p188
We work to make money and then hopefully use that money to buy ourselves memories with the people we love. Simple things like that bring us joy. p197
___________________
"I thought you're supposed to have your private life from your parents."
Nana Betsy turns from the stove and puts her hand on her hip. "I can tell you that ain't written anywhere." p208
_____________________________
"Blake didn't come up with this, but he said comedy was about controlling why people laugh at you." p212
Description
Texting my friends. The human equivalent of a fly rubbing its back legs together. It's just something we do. It's not supposed to kill your three best friends. p10
Tears stream down my wrists and dampen my shirt cuffs. They dribble onto the blue carpet with white flecks. I think for a second about all the places I've made a small part of me. Now a tiny piece of this church holds my tears. Maybe after I'm dead, they can cut up the carpet and extract my DNA from my tears that have soaked into the carpet and resurrect me. Maybe that's what the resurrection will be. p11
I help carry Blake's casket to the hearse. It weighs a thousand pounds. I had a science teacher ask us once: "What weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of lead?" Everyone said lead. But a few hundred pounds of best friend and casket don't weight the same as a few hundred pounds of lead or feathers. it weighs much more. p12
Get it? Carver? Blade? Blake had come up with the nickname. It's funny because I dress like a guy who wants to be a writer and whose older sister works at Anthropologie and helps dress him. Guys who meet this description don't generally go by "Blade." p15-16
chapter 3-- Good for dialogue and general teenage-ness. Description of a great night. Wonderful for a write-along-side text.
She wipes away tears. A few seconds of sniffling pass. Then the slow returning creep of guilt, taking the baton from grief and exhaustion. It resembles that moment when you're hiking and you step into an icy creek. It takes a second for the frigid water to seep in and soak your socks. Maybe you've even managed to pull your foot out of the water already. But then there's that wet chill spreading around your foot, and you know you're going to be miserable for the rest of the day. p21
"Blake's funeral was beautiful." I'm saying it without conviction. I'm not even fooling myself. A beautiful funeral for your best friend is a species of drinking a delicious poison, or being bitten by a majestic tiger. p29
As we sit there together, I can sense their minds turning, trying to take advantage of the opportunity. Looking for the right words. I know what the air feels like around people who are trying to find perfect words and coming up empty. p61
We hang out that way in the relative cool of the tree-formed shadows spayed across the grass, the sunset a purple fire in the leaves. The cicadas hum in our ears like the Earth vibrating. p63
For Journalism--
p22-23 encounter with the reporter outside the funeral
The thing is that none of the articles about the Accident have identified me by name. This page does. Now any future employer, any school that Googles me, will see this. And that's if I have future employers or schools and I'm not in prison. p160
Mental Illness
She hurries off to deal with people who are actually hurt and not merely crazy. I wonder if I would have preferred that there be something physically wrong with me. Something you could heal with a cast. Stitch up. Excise. My mind is all that makes me special. I can't afford to lose it. p41
#relatable
It's not that I love shelving books as much I love simply being surrounded by them. I need the not-interacting-with-anyone-ness of it. I need the mindless repetition. I need the vanilla-dry-tobacco-air-conditioner-mold scent of it in my nose. p46
Sometimes you learn things the moment they come out of your mouth, like the information was hiding there, sage from your brain. "In.. case I go to jail, I want to be able to protect myself."
p123-124 college admission essay!
Dealing with Loss
I hope someday it feels right again to pick up a girl and get ice cream and eat it in the park. p76
p84-85 Beach-in-November description is beautiful
Now silences feel like absences. Absences feel like loss. Loss feels like grief. Grief triggers guilt. Guilt is a scarlet anguish. p123
"Today, when I was practicing, I started crying. Randomly. Like I wasn't remembering Eli at that moment or anything. It's just-- like what I was playing unlocked another door in me and stuff came rushing out. Grief is weird. It seems to come in these waves out of nowhere. One minute I'm standing in the ocean, fine. The next minute I'm drowning." p130
"Our minds seek causality because it suggests an order to the universe that may not actually exist, even if you believe in some higher power. Many people would prefer to accept an undue share of blame for a tragic event than concede that there's no order to things. Chaos is frightening .A capricious existence where bad things happen to good people for no discernible reason is frightening." p232
"It'll take time and work. But someday your world will be put right. I've never found it to be a matter of purging yourself of feeling, but rather coming to live with it. Making it a part of you that doesn't hurt so badly." p253
"I want to be happy again before I die. That's all I want." p321
_________________________________
I once thought heartbreak was akin to contracting a cold or becoming pregnant. I only comes one at a time. Once you get it, you can't get it again until you're done with the first round.
It turns out it's actually more like how you eat dinner until you're full. But the minute someone says, "There's pie!" you suddenly have room again in your dessert stomach, separate from your dinner stomach. You have a love heart, separate from your grieving heart, or your guilt heart, or your fear heart. All can be individually broken in their own way. p322
_________________________________
"I'll remember Ruben's smile, or I'll smell a cologne that reminds me of him- like a lot of teenage boys, he always wore too much. And when those memories hit me, I feel that ache. So will you. But your life will be full enough, but enough to absorb it, and you'll go on." p386
Discussion
"This is sort of the hot new thing in prosecution. Up in Massachusetts they tried to pin manslaughter on a girl who encouraged her friend by text message to commit suicide. Similar idea here." p95
To me? Totally not! Would be a great discussion, I think.
p117-- comedy vs funny
"... Anyway, we go out to the car, and I'm like 'Dude, Blake, aren't you embarrassed?' And he looks at me like I'm the crazy one and goes, 'Have you ever thought less of somebody for making you laugh on purpose'? And I think for a sec and say no. And he goes: 'Dignity is overrated. People can live without it. I know because I did. But people can't live without laughter. I'll gladly trade dignity for laughter, because dignity is cheap and laughter is worth everything.'" p187
I just loved this
I'm nervous about calling them until I remind myself that I recently informed a mother over the phone that her son died. If I can do that, I guess I can do anything. Phone-wise. p246
For the most part, you don't hold people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone. p277
"There's a water cycle. Water never goes away. It never dies or is destroyed. It just changes form form to form in a continuous cycle, like energy. On a hot summer day, you've drunk water that a dinosaur drank. You might have cried tears that Alexander the Great cried." p281
name conversation p 339
I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck." p5
In general, I'd rather be bitten on the nuts by a Komodo dragon than make small talk. But sometimes you do what you have to do. p7
If Sauce Crew had official positions, mine would be Keeper of the Sacred Traditions. I love the idea of the families we choose having all the features of familydom, including traditions. p63
"Child Protection? My heavens, yes. The sheriff? Many times. But we're talking about a rural county with limited resources. They don't do a thing." p188
We work to make money and then hopefully use that money to buy ourselves memories with the people we love. Simple things like that bring us joy. p197
___________________
"I thought you're supposed to have your private life from your parents."
Nana Betsy turns from the stove and puts her hand on her hip. "I can tell you that ain't written anywhere." p208
_____________________________
"Blake didn't come up with this, but he said comedy was about controlling why people laugh at you." p212
Description
Texting my friends. The human equivalent of a fly rubbing its back legs together. It's just something we do. It's not supposed to kill your three best friends. p10
Tears stream down my wrists and dampen my shirt cuffs. They dribble onto the blue carpet with white flecks. I think for a second about all the places I've made a small part of me. Now a tiny piece of this church holds my tears. Maybe after I'm dead, they can cut up the carpet and extract my DNA from my tears that have soaked into the carpet and resurrect me. Maybe that's what the resurrection will be. p11
I help carry Blake's casket to the hearse. It weighs a thousand pounds. I had a science teacher ask us once: "What weighs more? A pound of feathers or a pound of lead?" Everyone said lead. But a few hundred pounds of best friend and casket don't weight the same as a few hundred pounds of lead or feathers. it weighs much more. p12
Get it? Carver? Blade? Blake had come up with the nickname. It's funny because I dress like a guy who wants to be a writer and whose older sister works at Anthropologie and helps dress him. Guys who meet this description don't generally go by "Blade." p15-16
chapter 3-- Good for dialogue and general teenage-ness. Description of a great night. Wonderful for a write-along-side text.
She wipes away tears. A few seconds of sniffling pass. Then the slow returning creep of guilt, taking the baton from grief and exhaustion. It resembles that moment when you're hiking and you step into an icy creek. It takes a second for the frigid water to seep in and soak your socks. Maybe you've even managed to pull your foot out of the water already. But then there's that wet chill spreading around your foot, and you know you're going to be miserable for the rest of the day. p21
"Blake's funeral was beautiful." I'm saying it without conviction. I'm not even fooling myself. A beautiful funeral for your best friend is a species of drinking a delicious poison, or being bitten by a majestic tiger. p29
As we sit there together, I can sense their minds turning, trying to take advantage of the opportunity. Looking for the right words. I know what the air feels like around people who are trying to find perfect words and coming up empty. p61
We hang out that way in the relative cool of the tree-formed shadows spayed across the grass, the sunset a purple fire in the leaves. The cicadas hum in our ears like the Earth vibrating. p63
For Journalism--
p22-23 encounter with the reporter outside the funeral
The thing is that none of the articles about the Accident have identified me by name. This page does. Now any future employer, any school that Googles me, will see this. And that's if I have future employers or schools and I'm not in prison. p160
Mental Illness
She hurries off to deal with people who are actually hurt and not merely crazy. I wonder if I would have preferred that there be something physically wrong with me. Something you could heal with a cast. Stitch up. Excise. My mind is all that makes me special. I can't afford to lose it. p41
#relatable
It's not that I love shelving books as much I love simply being surrounded by them. I need the not-interacting-with-anyone-ness of it. I need the mindless repetition. I need the vanilla-dry-tobacco-air-conditioner-mold scent of it in my nose. p46
Sometimes you learn things the moment they come out of your mouth, like the information was hiding there, sage from your brain. "In.. case I go to jail, I want to be able to protect myself."
p123-124 college admission essay!
Dealing with Loss
I hope someday it feels right again to pick up a girl and get ice cream and eat it in the park. p76
p84-85 Beach-in-November description is beautiful
Now silences feel like absences. Absences feel like loss. Loss feels like grief. Grief triggers guilt. Guilt is a scarlet anguish. p123
"Today, when I was practicing, I started crying. Randomly. Like I wasn't remembering Eli at that moment or anything. It's just-- like what I was playing unlocked another door in me and stuff came rushing out. Grief is weird. It seems to come in these waves out of nowhere. One minute I'm standing in the ocean, fine. The next minute I'm drowning." p130
"Our minds seek causality because it suggests an order to the universe that may not actually exist, even if you believe in some higher power. Many people would prefer to accept an undue share of blame for a tragic event than concede that there's no order to things. Chaos is frightening .A capricious existence where bad things happen to good people for no discernible reason is frightening." p232
"It'll take time and work. But someday your world will be put right. I've never found it to be a matter of purging yourself of feeling, but rather coming to live with it. Making it a part of you that doesn't hurt so badly." p253
"I want to be happy again before I die. That's all I want." p321
_________________________________
I once thought heartbreak was akin to contracting a cold or becoming pregnant. I only comes one at a time. Once you get it, you can't get it again until you're done with the first round.
It turns out it's actually more like how you eat dinner until you're full. But the minute someone says, "There's pie!" you suddenly have room again in your dessert stomach, separate from your dinner stomach. You have a love heart, separate from your grieving heart, or your guilt heart, or your fear heart. All can be individually broken in their own way. p322
_________________________________
"I'll remember Ruben's smile, or I'll smell a cologne that reminds me of him- like a lot of teenage boys, he always wore too much. And when those memories hit me, I feel that ache. So will you. But your life will be full enough, but enough to absorb it, and you'll go on." p386
Discussion
"This is sort of the hot new thing in prosecution. Up in Massachusetts they tried to pin manslaughter on a girl who encouraged her friend by text message to commit suicide. Similar idea here." p95
To me? Totally not! Would be a great discussion, I think.
p117-- comedy vs funny
"... Anyway, we go out to the car, and I'm like 'Dude, Blake, aren't you embarrassed?' And he looks at me like I'm the crazy one and goes, 'Have you ever thought less of somebody for making you laugh on purpose'? And I think for a sec and say no. And he goes: 'Dignity is overrated. People can live without it. I know because I did. But people can't live without laughter. I'll gladly trade dignity for laughter, because dignity is cheap and laughter is worth everything.'" p187
I just loved this
I'm nervous about calling them until I remind myself that I recently informed a mother over the phone that her son died. If I can do that, I guess I can do anything. Phone-wise. p246
For the most part, you don't hold people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone. p277
"There's a water cycle. Water never goes away. It never dies or is destroyed. It just changes form form to form in a continuous cycle, like energy. On a hot summer day, you've drunk water that a dinosaur drank. You might have cried tears that Alexander the Great cried." p281
name conversation p 339
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