Roy Exum: The P.S. To A Sad Story

  • Monday, April 27, 2015
  • Roy Exum
Roy Exum
Roy Exum

Back in the days when we were determined that the Chattanooga News-Free Press would have the best sports section in the country, I was traveling a whole lot. For example, back then I would be leaving today or tomorrow for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, this after hardly recovering from a week spent at The Masters. And, as it happens with those who are constantly in search for tomorrow’s headline, you meet a wide range of people who are very real and very wonderful.

The best friendships you forge are with the other writers in a fun fraternity where you swap stories, quotes and jokes, and long ago I got to know Ivan Maisel, who today is the head college football writer for ESPN.

Ivan was a great guy, solid writer, and a peaceful soul. We didn’t hang out much; he was much too nice for the group of bawdy hellions that attracted me but, just the same, I had great respect for his ability and his pen. We were friends.

Ivan’s ability as a true craftsman of a writer is why I openly cried last Monday when I learned a fisherman on Lake Ontario had found Ivan’s 21-year-old son floating on its surface. The big reason I cried was because I have been haunted by the eulogy for the then-missing Max Maisel that his father delivered in a packed synagogue in late March.

After Max was just found almost a month later, his family issued a statement. Part of it read: "We knew this day would come, and we are relieved that it has. But it is merely the postscript to our sad story. We have mourned Max from the night that the Rochester police called to tell us he was missing. There was no other plausible solution to the puzzle he left behind.

"Now we must get on with living with this hole in our lives,” the statement read. “Death cannot take away the love we continue to have for our son and the love that our daughters have for their brother. Death will not rob us of that.”

I cannot imagine the grief and the despair that the Maisel family has been forced to bear since Max was reported as missing in late February, or the equally wrenching task that Ivan had to face in writing his son’s glorious eulogy while Max was still missing. But because each of us matters – every one of us matter -- allow me to share two excerpts from a father’s farewell comments at the memorial service. Here is what Ivan said at the beginning, and at the end.

* * *

Max’s death has shone a light on the innate goodness in people, a quality that I am sure I didn’t appreciate until now. I think of that as a gift from our son. I have to say, Max, that on the whole, I would have preferred a dozen golf balls.

Eight years ago, Meg and I stood here and talked about Max, who on that day became a Bar Mitzvah, the Jewish threshold of adulthood. Today we are here again to talk about Max, who we presumed drowned on Feb. 22, shortly after he turned 21, the legal threshold of adulthood.

Max always hated being the center of attention. One of the smiles we have allowed ourselves of late is thinking of how Max would have felt about trending on Twitter, or being the subject of a story on People Magazine’s website.

In public, Max didn’t enter a room as much as he slid quietly along the wall. I should tell you that at home, he never entered the room quietly. When Max came down our stairs, he hit each step in a way that sounded somewhere between a gallop and a rockslide.

A lot went on between Max’s ears, most of which he guarded very carefully. He let very few — actually, close to none — inside his gates. He did this for self-preservation. It was a learned behavior. As a small boy, he had trouble grasping social cues. As he got older, he understood them but they remained a foreign language.

Max always marched to his own beat. As a toddler, he didn’t like loud noises, new foods or itchy tags. He was on his own planet and happy to be there. By age two, though, we realized he was different in ways that were stunting him and we intervened with every available resource: Special pre-school, speech therapy, OT, PT, psychologists, specialists — we spent the GNP of several small countries having him tested, all to find out he is “somewhere on the learning disorder spectrum.”

Thank you, behavioral sciences.

* * *

There is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Max intended to take his own life. The Rochester police tell us they will not connect the dots. But you don’t have to be a pointillist to see a larger picture. We live at a time when suicide is recognized as a result of mental illness, when the stigma has been removed. Even if it weren’t, we have never been ashamed of Max, and we aren’t going to start now.

And yet. And yet.

Three days before he disappeared, he paid for a year-long membership to OK Cupid, the dating service. On the day he disappeared, he spent the afternoon doing photographic work, which we think was for a class. Police found no note in his car or on his computer. None of this, they tell us, is consistent with the behavior of someone intent upon hurting himself.

Suicide can be an impulsive act; or, as my fellow (Mobile, Ala., native) Jimmy Buffett sang about tattoos, a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Really, what difference does it make? Accidental or intentional, he’s gone. Either path leads to the result that we don’t have him anymore.

We have learned over the last month that hindsight is not 20/20. It is, in fact, a hall of mirrors, distorting memory, assigning motive and meaning where it may not belong.

It is tempting to think of this as a version of ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ with the last reel missing. Clarence (a friend) didn’t save Max, who, as a result, didn’t realize the impact his life had on all of us.

In the end, we may never know what happened. All we do know is that Max tried to leave the room — quietly.

* * *

As I wrote in my first paragraphs, Ivan Maisel is a master with a pen.

royexum@aol.com

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