The apocalypse will begin with a series of beeps. Not like an alarm clock or a smoke detector. More like the sound of a truck backing up: patient, but persistent. I know this the same way you know the address of your parents’ house or the color of the walls in your childhood bedroom—I’ve been there before and retained the salient details.
I won’t personally make it to this apocalypse, however. My death is slated for a day in June 2031, a little over a year before the big event. While jogging around the indoor track at a 24 Hour Fitness in downtown Seattle, I’ll suffer an aneurysm and collapse. I’ll be dead before my face hits the spongy rubber floor. I will be forty-seven years old.
The fact of my own death will come as such a non-surprise to me that I’ll fail to warn Cole of its imminence.1 This is ironic because from the time my son is old enough to understand words, I’ll routinely remind him that the world will end before his sixteenth birthday.
“So, best not to take life too seriously, sweetheart,” I’ll say.
Cole will not heed my advice. He’ll be an honors student, captain of his Knowledge Bowl team, and an active participant in Amnesty International for Kids. He’ll be a chronic worrier. A sloucher, a brow furrower, and a bit of a hypochondriac. This is to say Cole will take after his mother.
Would I rather see Cole spend his life as some pint-sized hedonist—apathetic, uninvolved, unconcerned, only interested in cheap thrills and the trappings of his own abbreviated youth? Certainly not. What I’ll mean when I tell Cole not to take life too seriously is that this show—this right here, right now—isn’t the only show there is. And as caught up as we get in ourselves, these selves are so very very temporary that it almost isn’t worth paying them much attention at all. I’ll want him to strive for a degree of non-attachment. Of course, I don’t know why I’ll think it’s reasonable to ask this of my child when I’ve never been much good at it myself. No matter how many times I’ve tried.
Cole’s father Aaron will never express any particular concern over my warnings. As an acquisitions editor for a small but respectable publishing house and therefore a man with a keen appreciation for literary device, Aaron will take this apocalypse-forecasting as allegory. He’ll assume my prophecies function in much the same way other adults use the story of Santa Claus to ensure good behavior in their children. Aaron will be inclined to overlook other faults of mine as well. And I his. We’ll be tremendously fond of one another in that fault-overlooking sort of way. In this respect, Cole will do us both good. He’ll be our harshest critic. From the time he is very young, his honesty will be unwavering, unclouded by his affections.2
The last time I’ll see Cole alive (or, more accurately, the last time Cole will see me alive), he’ll be sitting at the kitchen table, working on the final project for his math class. His glasses will have slipped down almost to the tip of his nose. I’ll resist the urge to reach out and push them back up. At fourteen, he will be fiercely opposed to that sort of motherly intervention.
“Cole, maybe it’s time to knock this stuff off for a bit. Wouldn’t you rather go play video games? Or smoke a joint? Or have unprotected sex with one of the neighbor girls?” I’ll say.
“I have to get an A in Mr. Ferguson’s class if I want him to recommend me for honors geometry next year.”
“Maybe honors geometry isn’t the most important thing in the world,” I’ll remind him, taking a bottle of water from the fridge and zipping it into my gym bag.
“It is to me,” Cole will say.
A week later, and five days after my funeral, he’ll graduate from the eighth grade at the top of his class. He’ll wear the same suit for both occasions.
A sure sign that an apocalypse is on its way3—well before the beeping picks up—is violent and repeated movement of continental plates. There are earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. There are tsunamis. Mountains get taller and canyons get deeper. The Galapagos Islands double in number. Not all of these tectonic shifts are catastrophic, and they don’t all happen at once. In fact, it usually takes several weeks for the news media to begin suggesting the Earth is experiencing anything out of the ordinary.
This time around, the first pre-apocalypse tremor to ripple along the Cascadia Fault will coincide with the first day of Cole’s sophomore year of high school. As treasurer of the West Seattle High School Safety Committee, Cole will clearly and calmly instruct his peers in French II to take cover under their desks until the shaking subsides. He will then lead the class (his befuddled, French-born teacher included) out of the building to the twenty-yard-line of the football stadium where they will have been previously instructed to line up during disaster preparedness drills. The earthquake will register a 4.1 on the Richter scale with its epicenter off the coast of Vancouver Island. No one at West Seattle High will suffer any injury as a result of the incident and school will not be dismissed early that day, despite the wishes of Cole’s peers. Cole himself will not have strong feelings about this one way or the other.
Ten days later, Mount Hood and Mount Jefferson will erupt within six hours of one another. The news stations will report a reasonable amount of panic in Oregon, but outside of the state reactions will be demure, speculative. Better them than us will be the general response from Washingtonians who will look wearily in the directions of their own volcanoes. It will take less than twenty-four hours for ash plumes to reach Seattle.
The Sunday afternoon ash begins to fall like rain, Cole and Aaron will stand on the front porch together, taking in the spectacle. Cole will pull the collar of his t-shirt up over his mouth and nose.
“We shouldn’t stay outside too long,” he’ll say, his voice muffled. “There’s a heightened risk of developing respiratory inflammation from breathing in all this foreign matter. Prolonged exposure might even result in chronic asthma.”
“I don’t think we’re really breathing ash into our lungs,” Aaron will say. “Isn’t that what our nose hairs are for?”
“It’s not the ash itself that’s the problem. Ash is just pulverized rock. It’s all the other stuff that comes along with the ash, the bacteria that hitches a ride on the ash. That’s what we’ve really got to worry about.”
“It that true?” Aaron will ask.
“Eighty percent certain. I’ll look into it.”
Then father and son will go back inside—back to reading separate books in their separate bedrooms, as will be their weekend custom.
“Do you think there will be more earthquakes?” Cole will ask, appearing at Aaron’s door sometime later.
“I don’t know. You’re the science expert here, not me. Do you think there will be more earthquakes?”
“I think there’s a good chance, yes.”
“If your mom was here, she would say this is a sign,” Aaron will muse.
“Well, technically, everything’s a sign of something,” Cole will say. “I mean, everything’s a cause of something, if you believe in the butterfly effect. Or nothing is a sign of anything, if you believe in David Hume.”
“And which do you believe in?”
“I’ll tell you what I believe. I believe we should get a proper earthquake kit. First aid supplies, blankets, flashlights, portable radio, iodine tablets, three days worth of food.”
Aaron will give Cole twenty dollars and tell him he can start by stocking up on canned goods from the corner store. Cole will accept this mission with enthusiasm.4
Despite having been raised by devout Jewish parents, Aaron will never consider himself a spiritual person. But following the earthquake and the eruptions, he will begin to look for explanations beyond himself. It will start with a conversation with a man in a robe downtown. The man will be bearded; his robe will be dirty and frayed at the hem. The man will be proselytizing, but he won’t speak to Aaron directly when he passes. Aaron, on his lunch break the day after the ash first arrives, will approach the man unbidden. Aaron will listen as the man talks about goodness, and grace, and love for all sentient creatures, and the life that comes after this one. He will give Aaron three sticks of incense and a Xeroxed pamphlet of prayers in a language Aaron won’t recognize. There are transliterations on the back of each page, the man will explain.
When Aaron gets home that night, Cole will still be at school, tied up with some extracurricular activity or another. Aaron will take off his suit jacket and brush the ash out of his hair into the kitchen sink. In the first days after the eruptions, it will be impossible to spend more than a few minutes outside without the volcanic residue collecting on any uncovered extremities.
Aaron will pull the incense and prayer booklet from his briefcase and sit cross-legged on the living room floor, spreading the items out on the coffee table. He’ll follow the robed man’s instructions, lighting each stick and circling the air around it with his right hand, as if beckoning the smoke upward to God. This is how the man will have said it, beckoning the smoke upward to God. Aaron will read the foreign prayers out loud, placing each incense stick on an individual saucer (for lack of proper holders).
In this action, he will feel little goodness, or grace, or love for all sentient creatures. Instead, he’ll feel slightly foolish. He’ll try to imagine what I might say if I could see him. He’ll decide I’d approve, if for no other reason than his appearance with the incense makes an amusing spectacle.5
Similarly, he’ll know that Cole’s response won’t be so accepting. When Aaron hears the front door open, he’ll grab for his briefcase, push the whole mess on the coffee table into it, close the case, and stand to greet his son.
“It smells like smoke in here,” Cole will say.
“It smells like smoke everywhere,” Aaron will say. Cole will accept this answer. Then he will carefully shake free the ash from his hair into a Tupperware container. He’ll shut himself in his room and examine that same ash under his compound microscope until Aaron tells him it’s time to eat.
From his observations of the ash he collects, Cole will assemble an entry for his school’s fall science fair. On poster board, he will diagram the way ash does in fact pick up bacteria and other microorganisms as it moves hundreds of miles from the eruption site to places beyond. His project will win first prize for his grade and the honor of competing in a regional contest in Wenatchee at the end of the semester. This contest will never actually take place, of course.
The second symptom of an impending end-of-the-world is that the moon speeds up. Instead of completing a circuit around our planet once every 27.2 days, it gradually moves faster and faster until people see a full moon on an almost weekly basis. The most concerning side effect from the moon’s acceleration is a corresponding acceleration of the Earth’s tides. Where the tide normally comes in and goes out twice a day, once the apocalypse nears, it instead comes in and goes out upwards of seven times in a twenty-four-hour period. This is extremely disruptive to the planet’s ocean life, and many of the creatures that dwell close to the shore beach themselves out of confusion. To unsuspecting observers, it may appear as if the sea is literally belching up its inhabitants, forcibly expelling them from their watery homes.
The morning fish, mollusks, and several small sharks begin to wash up along Alki Beach, Cole will be getting ready for school, drinking instant coffee with the TV turned to the morning news. When he sees the news report, he will take Aaron’s car (though he’ll only have his learner’s permit and not a real driver’s license) and drive to the shore. He will stand beside the newsmen, the baffled lifeguards, and the team of marine biologists from the University of Washington and survey the scene. Then he will return home to gather up all the plastic tubs and buckets he can find. He will change into his Boy Scout uniform because he will feel the outfit lends him some air of authority. He will drive back to the beach and begin collecting sea creatures from the sand, one per tub or bucket, which he will first fill with seawater. No one will interfere with his activities.
Back at the house, Cole will transfer the larger creatures to sinks and bathtubs, each with a rubber stopper jammed tight over the drain. The smaller fish will stay in their buckets for the time being, placed in a neat row below the living room window so they can enjoy some natural light. Despite his often cold approach to other people, my son will always have a soft spot for animals. He’ll always make it his mission to rescue any pets lost in our neighborhood, and he’ll insist each year that one of his Hanukkah presents be a donation to the Humane Society. Still, that Cole would skip school and violate traffic laws to resuscitate half-dead sea slugs will come as a surprise to Aaron. And a little bit to Cole himself, although he won’t admit it.6
“Your mother would be pleased to see you showing some spontaneity,” Aaron will tell Cole that evening as they wait for dinner to arrive. They will have to order pizza because the baby sixgill shark in the kitchen sink will make cooking difficult.
“Let’s not talk about that,” Cole will say.
“What should we talk about?”
“Saltwater. And hydrometers and filtration systems. Aquariums, in essence. The fish are all right for now, but they can only sit in stagnant water for so long. They’ll need proper accommodations if they’re going to survive.”
Aaron will nod. Always supportive, always understanding. “And how long will your new friends be staying with us, do you think?”
“Until it’s safe for them to go back to the ocean.”
“Cole, I’m not sure things are ever going to go back to normal.”
“The Earth is in a constant state of flux,” Cole will say. “Sure, something is happening now that’s different than what we’re used to, but that’s just the risk of living on a dynamic planet. You’ve got to expect change. In a few years, we’ll be looking at different scenarios entirely. The thing to remember is that nothing is permanent.”
“Your mother would be happy to hear you say that, too.”
“I thought we were talking about something else.”
Aaron will agree to take Cole to get tanks, filters, fish food, multi-colored rocks, tiny plastic castles, and whatever else his son thinks their aquatic refugees may need. Aaron and Cole will have to drive to a strip mall in the University District to buy their supplies since the aquarium and terrarium store near the house will have closed without explanation. It’s not hard to infer explanation though. No sign necessary to say where the owners will have gone. To someplace else. Hoping, despite news reports insisting otherwise, that only the Pacific Northwest is in turmoil.
Back home, Aaron and Cole will set up a dozen tanks and fish bowls. The sea creatures will seem content enough in their new homes with the exception of a fist-sized octopus, which sometime during the night will open the top of its tank and climb out. In the morning, Cole will discover the animal splayed out flat on the hardwood floor, not dead but clearly unwell. Cole’s solution to the octopus-escape-problem will be constant vigilance. He’ll return the octopus to its original bucket and keep that bucket with him at all times.
What comes next is the distortion of night and day. In Seattle, for example, the sun rises at six in the morning, then sets shortly thereafter. Then it rises again at noon. And so on and so forth. This is because the Earth, like the moon before it, has sped up in its rotation—both on its axis and around the sun. My best guess about this is that basically an apocalypse is just the whole universe spinning into itself. These stages are all about picking up speed.
On his way to class each morning, Cole, wearing his Boy Scout jersey, will stop at a nearby elementary school to act as crossing guard. Octopus bucket in one hand and a bright orange flag in the other, he’ll escort younger kids—those whose parents are still sending them to school—across California Avenue.
“It’s not safe for them to be walking around in the street in the dark,” he’ll explain to Aaron.
Aaron will agree, but he’ll wonder why this responsibility should fall to his son. He’ll also wonder if perhaps someone shouldn’t be looking out for Cole in the dark as well. This will be the first time in a long time that Aaron will think to be concerned for Cole’s safety. Usually, Cole will be sufficiently concerned for his own safety that Aaron need not bother.
The following week, a series of small earthquakes will once again rattle the Puget Sound region. Geologists will debate whether these tremors are aftershocks from the first quake six weeks ago, or independent seismic movement.7 For the most part, these quakes will be so slight that they require no real response on the part of those who feel them. In a growing list of environmental concerns, they will barely register. So what if the breakfast dishes rattle a bit? Once the shaking subsides, Cole will give a quick glance into the bucket by his feet and go right on back to eating his oatmeal like nothing’s happened.
Across the kitchen, assembling brown bag lunches, Aaron, too, will look to the octopus.
“Does your octopus have a name?” he’ll ask Cole.
“No. Naming animals, especially wild, non-domesticated animals, is an act of pointless sentimentality. Why would I give something a name when it doesn’t even care if I call to it or not? It can’t respond. It has no knowledge of itself as an individual. What does something like that need with a name?”
“You should give your octopus a name.”
“Tell me one good reason why it needs a name and I’ll give it one.”
“Because it’s cumbersome to always have to refer to the two of you as ‘Cole and his octopus in a bucket.’ Like if some of your friends from school were to come by and you weren’t home, I would have say, ‘Cole and his octopus in a bucket are out right now, but they’ll be back soon.’ You see what I mean?”
“I don’t really have friends from school who come by the house looking for me.”
“Please name the octopus, Cole.”
“If anyone from school wants to find me, which they rarely do, they can just call my phone. I don’t see your scenario as being all that plausible.”
“How about something alliterative, like Oscar the Octopus, or Olin the Octopus?”
“Oliver.”
“Good.”
That night, a Friday night, Aaron will go to temple. He won’t tell Cole where he’s going. Cole, absorbed in a book about continental drift, will take little notice of his father’s absence. Or if he does, he won’t remark on it. Although he will use the opportunity to sneak a chunk of cheddar cheese to Oliver.
“What the hell, Ollie,” Cole will whisper. “You only go around once.”
At the synagogue, Aaron will sit in the back with a bound prayer book open on his lap. He’ll take comfort in the weight of the book and the sound of familiar words he’s never known the meaning of. He can count on his fingers the number of Hebrew words he understands: “yes,” “please,” “sorry,” “no,” “blessed-art-thou,” and five names for God.
The room will be filled to capacity. It will occur to Aaron that others, like him, may be drawn in such times of uncertainty to faith. Or if not to faith, to familiar words and weighty texts. To the safety of traditions remembered from childhood—when to stand, when to sit, twisting hands through the fringes of father’s prayer shawl to pass the time while the grown-ups chant out a senseless melody, not beautiful but lulling, then grape juice and cookies after kiddush, followed by a sleepy car ride home.
The rabbi will resist the obvious temptation to proselytize on the situation at hand and its possible correlations to the vengeful God of the Torah. Aaron will appreciate this. And though he’ll want to glean meaning from the sermon, Aaron will have trouble connecting to the rabbi’s words in English and wish he could have slipped out once the Hebrew prayers concluded. His mind will wander. After services, he’ll leave quickly.
Walking though the parking lot, Aaron will pause, involuntarily, a few yards from his car, overcome by the feeling that he is about to fall. He’ll worry he’s going to tip forward, or perhaps backward. For a panicky moment, he will lose all sense of bearing and grounding. He’ll bend over, grabbing his knees for support until the feeling passes. This will be a problem of gravity—or rather, the illusion of a change in gravity. With the planet accelerating, objects on Earth will feel at times unmoored. Momentarily lighter, or heavier, or simply off-kilter. It is not uncommon during this stage for people to suffer a periodic sense of disorder and disorientation—as if they are no longer connected to the planet’s surface in quite the same way as before.
Back home, Cole will have switched from reading to scouring the Internet for information on North American subduction zones. The octopus bucket will sit on the desk beside the computer, a single curious tentacle probing along the edge of the container. Without looking away from the screen, Cole will gently coax the tentacle back into the water. “Easy, boy,” he’ll say. Aaron, seeking distraction, will offer to play cards or a board game with his son. Cole will decline.
On Saturday morning, Aaron will wake feeling unwell. The sensation of being off-balance will have returned to him. In addition to that, an intermittent but severe nausea. At the breakfast table, he’ll notice that Cole has only just picked at the toast in front of him. When he asks Cole if he’s feeling all right, his son will give no more response than a dismissive nod. Aaron will try to eat a slice of Cole’s neglected toast with little success, his stomach turning, tongue seemingly too fat, his teeth too small.
He’ll suggest to Cole that the two of them go together to visit my grave. This is something they’ll have done only once since my death—for the unveiling of my headstone. Otherwise, both my husband and son will avoid the sprawling cemetery. Although they will never discuss it with one another, they’ll both hold the belief that there is nothing really left of me at Washington Memorial Park.
But in his increasing anxiety, Aaron will continue to seek tangible reassurances. A grave is indeed the most tangible reminder of the dead. And so for this, I cannot fault him.8
“Bring Ollie,” Aaron will say to Cole, hoping to make the outing more palatable.
Cole, already dressed in a suit and tie, will beg off claiming a prior obligation: a Security Council meeting for his Model United Nations club.
“I can’t just ditch with no explanation,” he’ll say.
“Visiting your mother’s grave isn’t a valid explanation?”
“Sure, if I had cleared it with the Secretary General when we set the meeting schedule. But at the time, I assured my fellow delegates I had no personal conflicts on this date. It would be unprofessional for me to cancel at the last minute for a non-emergency situation. Are you saying this is an emergency situation?”
Aaron will want to tell his son that with the Earth shifting beneath them, night and day blurring into one, and a host of displaced sea creatures residing in the living room, every situation is, in fact, an emergency situation.
Instead, he’ll offer Cole a ride to school. On the way, they’ll watch the sun sink low in the sky with alarming speed. When they arrive, Aaron will be tempted to kiss Cole on the cheek, but he’ll restrain himself. As Cole gets out of the car, Aaron will hand him his book bag, then his octopus bucket, and wish him good luck in his international negotiations.
In the day’s second twilight, Aaron will pick through the cemetery with uncertain steps. Because my death will be sudden and early, Aaron and I will have made no prior preparations. In hindsight, Aaron will wish we’d had plans. As it is, I’ll be wedged between two unfamiliar dead people and Aaron will spend the bulk of his cemetery visit looking around for open plots, wondering, if he died that very day, how close in the ground could he get to me?9
Aaron won’t bring flowers to my grave. Instead, he’ll bring seven small rocks, pilfered from the neighbors’ Zen garden. It’s a tradition in the Jewish faith to leave pebbles when visiting the dead, harkening back to days when the ancient Israelites rolled boulders over graves, either to keep animals out or spirits in. On this point, religious scholars are uncertain. Aaron won’t give the origins of the tradition much consideration. For him, it will be a way to show his grieving has not yet ended. He’ll take the rocks out of his pocket and line them, one by one, across the top of my headstone. As soon as he’s done this, Aaron will feel overcome by dizziness. It will seem to him as if the world below him is literally spinning, as if the rules governing planet Earth have betrayed him and he may at any moment slip from its face and fly off into the air. It will be similar to the way he felt in the synagogue parking lot, but this time, much, much worse. He’ll drop to his knees and press his palms to the recently watered grass, trying to regain balance. The problem, he’ll decide, is a matter of weight. He’ll remove the rocks from my headstone in the reverse order from how he set them down and return them to his pocket. The spinning will subside and Aaron will stand up. But in its wake, the sensation will linger. He’ll stop looking around for vacant plots. Instead, on his way back to his car, Aaron will keep an eye out for pebbles, bending to pocket them each time he sees one.
At home, Aaron will sit cross-legged on the living room floor in front of the coffee table just as he did the evening after he met the holy man in the robe. He will take the rocks from his pocket and set them in a row across the coffee table. Then another row of rocks along the arm of the sofa. Somehow, this will feel right: to weigh down our household objects and undo the effects of what he believes is Earth’s new gravity upon them. Or perhaps it’s to grieve for them. For the life the three of us shared in their presence. Aaron won’t know for certain the reason, only that the action is important in that moment. He’ll go once again to collect rocks from the neighbors’ neglected Zen garden. These particular neighbors—the McEwans—will have moved out a number of weeks before to join family in Minneapolis. In fact, most of the block will have left for places away from fault lines and volcanoes, away from the coast. Aaron will take his time putting rocks on each piece of furniture, across doorframes, along windowsills, returning to the McEwans’ yard as needed.
When Cole gets home, Aaron won’t try to hide what he’s doing. In fact, he won’t even look up from his task to greet his son until he runs out of rocks and has to go next door for more. Cole will stand in the doorway and watch as Aaron gathers a double handful of pebbles. He’ll continue to watch as Aaron finishes with that batch and goes to fetch another. Only then will Cole stop him, pressing his hand against his father’s chest as he tries to pass.
“This will go quicker if we bring all the rocks inside at once,” Cole will say.
He’ll take two garbage bags and go out to the McEwans’ yard and fill them to carrying capacity. He’ll drag the bags one by one back into the house. Then he’ll set about helping his father line every surface of our modest home with rocks.
When I think about him doing this, I am filled with pride, more so even than when I think of him rescuing sea creatures, or shepherding grade school children across darkened streets.10
Cole will remove his jacket and roll up the sleeves of his dress shirt, tie thrown over his right shoulder. He’ll join Aaron in arranging the rocks. He’ll set them across radiators. He’ll set them on the keyboard and printer. He’ll set them on family photographs. He’ll slip them into medicine cabinets and dresser drawers. He’ll make his bed and put three rocks on his pillow. He’ll create neat circles of rocks around each burner on the stove. One rock on top of every spice in the spice rack. Cole will place rocks on the shelves of bookcases and along the rims of each fish tank. He’ll drop a handful into Oliver’s bucket. Then he’ll crawl on hands and knees toward his father. Aaron will be sitting on the floor, legs splayed out to one side, laying rocks along the baseboards in the living room. It will be slow going. When he reaches Aaron, Cole will take a rock from Aaron’s pile and balance it near the ankle of the older man’s left leg. Aaron will not notice. Cole will set another rock beside it. Then another. The line of rocks will creep up Aaron’s calf. Aaron will stop his own work to watch his son’s progress. Aaron will smile at his son who will in turn smile back. Is this a ritual or a game? Mourning or play? Aaron will try to think of something to say to solidify this moment—something they can both refer back to in the future. But nothing will come. He will feel the spinning sensation again and have to lie down, careful not to disturb Cole’s rocks on his leg. Unbidden, Cole will lie beside him, piling rocks along his own torso, from sternum to belt buckle.
That’s when the beeping will start.