Death is weird!

on contemplating death, friendship, Fade Into You covers and reheating nachos. 04/21/25.

I apologize ahead of time, this week’s newsletter will be a little different because I’m feeling a little different. This week is the anniversary of my dad’s death and as a result, it’s around this time of year that I contemplate death. Downer City, I know. It’s now two years at the time of me writing this and it feels like it was yesterday. My dad’s death is extremely complicated and to be completely honest, I can’t even talk about that much about the complexities of it because I had to sign something akin to a gag order in January because of a legal mess that surrounded his death. 

I didn’t have a good relationship with my dad when he died. I hadn’t spoken to him for two years, now the amount of time that he’s been dead. He left me with a mountain of questions, some legal issues, and a cocktail of conflicting emotions. This means my processing of the matter has been extremely messy. Mess, mess, mess. That’s truly the only word swirling around my brain as I write this. 

It all feels like a mess, even two years later. 

As a result, I don’t have much to talk about here this time around. I am drained. I haven’t slept through the night all week. The body really does keep score. I understand (via reading the book’s Wikipedia page) that there’s a lot of controversy whether the concept is true but from my experience, it is. My body has not forgotten. I accidentally dressed in the same outfit I wore on the day of his death on Tuesday. I didn’t realize until caught my reflection in the side of a building in the middle of the day, saw what I was wearing, and said “Fuck” out loud. I still remember the day vividly, as if it’s some weird indie movie I had on DVD as a teenager. The kind that I would spin so hard in my Lenovo laptop that a deep, permanent connection was bound to form. 

You know the whole out-of-body experience thing? That’s what it’s like. It feels like it happened to someone else. That said, my body definitely knows it happened to me even if my brain doesn’t. It’s keeping score like it’s bingo night in Boca Raton. 

I choose now to look at my dad’s death as something of a cautionary tale sometimes. Death is so final and permanent and you have no say in what happens to your world once you’re gone. You may have good intentions or certain reasons for doing what you do during your time on earth but when you’re gone, you don’t get to defend your choices. You don’t get to explain, amend, remedy or take back anything. Everything just is. 

That brings me to my next lesson from death: learning how to let sleeping dogs lie. I have so many regrets and questions but most of my work has been in coming to terms that I will never fully have any explanation for what went down. Even the manner of his death which was technically a medical accident. Healing requires acceptance. Healing requires letting go. 

I didn’t always have a bad relationship with my father. For a long time, he was an amazing dad which is where the complexity of the situation lies. I don’t know which dad to remember or which dad to grieve. I grieved my father before he was even dead. I realized upon speaking with my therapist about the situation this week that as a defense mechanism, I’ve locked away every good memory with my dad to a completely different section of my brain. I never allow myself to go there. It’s a Fort Knox-type beat.

My therapist implored me to try and open the lock but I don’t think I have the key yet. I’m probably gonna have to dig deep in my psyche to even find it but it’s a good idea to start the process now. It would be amazing to not associate my dad with the word MESS!!!

My friends

While I’m in the here and now, I have to say I’m so grateful for having amazing best friends in my life. When I reflect over the past two years of my life, all of my friends have put a hand up to help me stay standing and keep moving in their own way.

This week, I went out with Manny and Colin on the dreaded anniversary day, as we also did last year. We kind of did it the year before, too. They ended up coming to visit me in Toronto the week after my dad died. Colin and I had been planning on him coming for months and of course, it ended up aligning with the tragedy. Manny decided to tag along and I’m so grateful that he did.

What would have otherwise been an awful week was colored by laughter. Colin and Manny wore two of my old winter coats and ran around the downtown strip of my hometown trying every snack it had to offer, saving one to bring me to work. They watched me register fifteen letters at the post office. We went to my favorite Chinese food restaurant. Saw the Dungeons and Dragons movie which we still quote to this day. How wild that I associate such a difficult time with such fun memories!

Chrissy came the week after for my father’s celebration of life. She wore a black dress with a heart-shaped cut-out and listened to my often silly Quebecois aunt talk about how she has been a teacher for over twenty years. No one had asked.

We watched the Katy Perry Part of Me Documentary while sharing my bed the night before the event. We chose it so that I wouldn’t have to associate any of our favorite movies with the moment in time. How fitting it is that two years later Katy Perry goes up to space for seemingly no reason. Time and life are just an elastic band, I think.

Fade Into You

Ever since losing my ability to make music, I’ve found that I’ve been listening to music on a much deeper level. I’m not as concerned with production or how I might do something myself or how to achieve a certain mix. As a result, my listening experience has been a lot freer and less technical. Songs wash over me differently. I’m choosing to see this as a gift.

Over the past week, I’ve found myself enamored with the song Fade Into You and not just the original version. I’ve been listening to any cover of the song that I can get my hands on. I’m in Spotify playlists, I’m up on YouTube and I’m digging the crates of Soundcloud. Whether it’s Manchester Orchestra, Kelly Clarkson, or Au Revoir Simone, I think this song touches everyone in an unmistakable, deep way but in a way that feels like the sensation is different for everyone.

I think my favorite interpretation is the American Football version. It scratches a certain itch for me with its post-rock vibe and I love the back-and-forth vocals. Other favorites are Andrew Belle’s which doesn’t feature any acoustic guitar and is guided by a graceful, bouncing synth. I don’t listen to him at all but man, can he croon. I’ve also gravitated toward a very shoegaze-y rendition by Stumbleine which I found on Blalock Indie Rock Playlist maybe fifteen years ago. I’ve even had a re-sampling/re-work by Grimes stuck in my head some mornings.

I’ve found solace in this song over the past week, in all of its many forms. It’s shown me that we all want to hold the hand of someone else. That we all feel similar ways about yearning. No one of us is alone in feeling this song, which to me shows how quintessentially human it is.

I also love to pour over lyrics and the simplicity of this song’s lyrics are pourable. For a true yearner like me, this song is a drug.

Reheating nachos

Since I’ve spoken about some heavy shit here, I think I need to bring up a realization I had this week. If you’re chronically online like me, you’ve heard about the phrase ‘reheating nachos’ non-stop over the past couple of months. It’s kind of dumb and my best friend Chrissy hates it because most of the time that it’s used, it’s almost always mean-spirited. I agree and I have no idea why we asked Lady Gaga about it directly to her face.

We should not be acting like reheating nachos is easy. It’s not. Colin and I shared a VERY large portion of nachos at our friend Neil’s Marvel trivia night and ended up having leftovers. With that I learned… getting nachos back to their former glory is HARD AS HELL!!

Let me tell you though, I’ve learned the secret to reheating nachos properly. First, you heat your oven up to 350 or 375, whichever feels right to you at the moment. Remove cold ingredients (unless you’re a freak that likes hot avocado, I cannot help you there) and heat up the clump of nachos until the cheese becomes melty once again.

Then, stay with me here, spread the nachos down to ONE LAYER and broil them. Leave them in there for about four minutes or until you see that they’re golden and crispy. If you’ve got some stragglers underneath, flip it over and broil for another minute or so. And voila! Your nachos have been resurrected! To get the true Nick experience, watch He’s Just Not That Into You while you reheat/eat them and never finish it.

Honorable Mentions:

• Sound bath meditations on Youtube

• Oven ready Cauliflower pizzas — why did I have three this week???

• “Headphones On” by Addison Rae