O P I N I O N

NOT THAT PROFOUND

by Nate Graziano

Last Thursday night, my wife and I went to Chelby’s Pizza to have a few drinks in remembrance of our friend Bill, who passed away from pancreatic cancer on May 8, 2022, at the age of 48.

Liz and I threw a few back, laughed a little, toasted and teared up a few times, then drove home in the rain, a rain that had seemed to be coming down for weeks.

When we got home, Liz went downstairs into our finished basement to move some laundry into the dryer.

I should now probably mention—seeing this is essential to your understanding of the rest of the story that I’m about to unfold—that the basement is the one place in the world that has been designated as my own space. I write in the basement, and I watch sports on the flatscreen in the basement. All of my books are in bookcases in the basement, and all of my sports paraphernalia¹, movie posters and the motley art that  hangs in my basement.

On one wall of the basement, there is a photo collage that my stepdaughter made of Bill and me, along with a plaque celebrating former-Fisher Cats pitcher Kyle Drabek’s no-hitter in 2010 that once belonged to another friend who is no longer with us.

So you might imagine the chill that shot up my spine when my wife shrieked. “Nate, get down here! Right away!”

I was in the middle of changing and ran downstairs in my boxer shorts. What I saw filled my gut with panic and despair. My basement, the one place in the world that I could call my own, had flooded, and the laminate floor was under half an inch of water.

I stood on the bottom stair in shock, trying to process the travesty and figure out what I needed to do next.

Maybe it was the lapsed Catholic in me, but the first thing that came to my mind was the Old Testament story of Noah’s Ark. Was a malevolent God displeased with me and flooding my basement as a warning?

Or maybe it wasn’t God, but Bill in some supernatural realm, messing with me—although Bill would’ve short circuited the mini-fridge, skunking my beer, and not flooding me.

While examining the water in the basement, I gave into despair and accepted the fact that my basement, my space, was completely ruined. We then took advice from a plumber friend and ran fans and a dehumidifier and went to bed, choosing to deal with the aftermath in the morning when a plumber wouldn’t charge emergency rates.

The next morning, however, most of the water had subsided, seeping back into the earth and leaving only a thin layer of sediment on the laminate. So I called for a substitute teacher and got to work trying to fix my basement, realizing that I was luckier than most people who have to deal with water damage to their homes².

In the end, nothing—except for some old clothes and blankets on the closet floor—was completely ruined, and my basement is now pretty much back to normal, although I’m still in the process of airing it out with fans and a dehumidifier to combat any lingering musty smells.

But the whole thing was a reminder, to me, of how truly powerless we all are against the forces of nature, like my friend Bill, who was powerless against the malignant forces of Stage IV cancer.

It was also a reminder, to me, of how much I miss that son of a bitch.

1. This includes a beautiful reprint of Leroy Neiman’s painting from the end of “Rocky III”. ↩︎
2. As it turns out, there is more to this story. To be continued. ↩︎