“Yes.”
“Good, good. Take care, my boy.”
Tonight’s episode of Dragnet, the fourteenth of the first season of color episodes, is called “The Subscription Racket,” and it’s one of my favorites.
In this one, which originally aired on April 20, 1967, Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon are investigating a ring of young people who pose as students and fraudulently sell magazine subscriptions door-to-door by telling potential customers that the money will go for good causes rather than telling them the truth: the money will go into their pockets.
Sergeant Joe Friday and Officer Bill Gannon eventually arrest a young couple who are engaging in fraud—the young woman by changing the dollar amount on a check and the young man by using the Medal of Honor his father posthumously won and passing it off as his own. Sergeant Joe Friday takes a dim view of this.
The young man declares that his father gave his life for the medal. And Sergeant Joe Friday says that the young man will have to give up a little of his own life for using it. Sergeant Joe Friday seems to think that the young man’s father would not be proud. I’m glad my father was proud of me.
Enough of my letters are turning out to not be complaints that I ought to rethink my description of them. I now have a large collection of complaint letters and a smaller collection of letters of regret, letters of pleading, and now, tonight, a letter of awe and thanks. I prepare a new green office folder for this one.
Michael Stipe:
One of your songs made me cry today. I don’t like to cry, but I seem to be doing a lot of it lately, and to be honest, I think I would feel worse if I didn’t cry. Also, to be fair, it wasn’t just your song that made me cry. My father’s letter made me cry, too.
I don’t know how it is that you write songs that seem to sum up how I’m feeling. It’s not because you know me; you don’t. But you have a talent for it, and I want you to know that I’ve noticed.
“Everybody Hurts” is the perfect song to describe how I am feeling these days. I do feel like I am alone sometimes. But as you rightly point out, I am not alone. I have my mother. And I have a memory of my father that is a happy one.
Thank you, Michael Stipe, for writing such perfect songs.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 4
This morning, I sit calmly in Dr. Buckley’s waiting room, the soft sounds of string music washing over me. I have rearranged Dr. Buckley’s magazines; it wasn’t so hard. I have hope—that word again—that perhaps Dr. Buckley’s other patients are starting to care a bit more about maintaining order around here.
I awoke again at 7:38 a.m., the 227th time this year (because it’s a leap year). For one of the few times in recent weeks, I slept soundly and dreamlessly. Well, that’s not true: Nobody sleeps dreamlessly. But I don’t remember any dreams, and that’s nearly the same thing.
Today is the fifth full day without my father, and I don’t feel quite so badly about that as I did yesterday or the day before. I wish he were here, of course, especially now that I know he isn’t ashamed of me. But I also feel like it’s all going to be OK. I can’t explain this feeling. It is not based in fact, but rather in emotion. I prefer facts, but I don’t mind this emotion. Perhaps Dr. Buckley will have some ideas about all of this. I find emotions difficult to explain.
Perhaps Dr. Buckley will have some ideas about Donna Middleton, too, because I have none. I wish I did.
I’ll know soon enough. Dr. Buckley just ushered a man out of her office—the one I barreled into last week—and is signaling me to come in.
The man scowls at me as we cross paths.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Edward,” Dr. Buckley says, taking her seat. “How are you doing today?”
“I’m doing well.”
“That’s good. Again, I’m so sorry about your father. How is your mother?”
“I think she’s going to be OK.”
“And you?”
“I think I’m going to be OK, too. I feel…Well, it’s hard to explain.”
“Give it a try.”
“My father wrote me a letter. His lawyer gave it to me yesterday.”
“Oh?”
“But it’s not like the other letters I’ve gotten from the lawyer. My father told me in this letter that he’s proud of me and that he loves me. He apologized to me. I…Dr. Buckley, would you like to read the letter?”
“If you feel comfortable with that, Edward, I would love to.”
I lean forward in my chair and pull the folded letter out of my back pocket, then hand it to her.
Dr. Buckley gingerly unfolds the letter and starts reading, and I can’t be sure, but it looks like her eyes are getting teary.
After she stops reading, she looks for a while at the folded-up letter she still holds.
“Edward,” she finally says, “this is an extraordinary letter.”
“Yes.”
“I have patients who have waited all their lives to hear something like this from a parent, or a spouse, or a child.”
“Yes.”
“You should put this somewhere special. Don’t keep it folded up in your pocket.”
“Yes.”
She hands the letter back to me, and I hold it carefully.
“If I may, I think I can help you understand this feeling of peace you describe, Edward.”
“OK.”
“In the time we’ve been doing these sessions, what have been the constants in your life?”
“What do you mean?”
“The years change, the seasons change, the fashions change. What has remained the same?”
“I watch Dragnet every night.”
“Yes, you do, and strangely enough, I think that figures in. But what else?”
“I take my fluoxetine.”
“Yes. What else?”
“I complain about my father.”
“Yes. But it’s not just complaint. You’ve yearned for your father’s approval. You’ve wanted a better relationship with him.”
“Yes. But he’s dead now. I can’t have a better relationship with him now.”
“I disagree. Your father has given you a great gift with this letter. It allows you to have the relationship with him in death that you didn’t have when he was still alive.”
“How do you have a relationship in death?”
“It’s not a relationship in the way you’re thinking of. You don’t get to have coffee or share a conversation. But it’s in the way you feel about him—that you can have happy memories instead of sad ones. When someone asks you about your father, you can talk about what a warm, good man he was, not how he made you feel at times. That’s what he has given you. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so.”
“Think of it this way: When I ask what you’re thinking about your father, what do you say?”
“I miss him.”
“Why do you miss him?”
“Because I love him, and because I know he cared about me.”
“How do you know?”
“Because he told me.”
“Exactly. That’s the gift.”
Dr. Buckley is a very logical woman. She knows how to look at things in just the right way.
“I get it,” I say. “Now, tell me about how Dragnet figures in.”
Dr. Buckley is right: Dragnet does figure in.
She asks me when I started watching Dragnet. It was 1994. I was changing channels and came across it on the TV Land network. I was immediately struck by Sergeant Joe Friday. Even though he is fictitious, he is the only person I’ve ever known who cares about facts as much as I do. Sergeant Joe Friday isn’t interested in anything except the facts. That’s the way I am.