“Spikes” by Michael Chabon

Credit: Wikipedia

The process of grieving is a healing pain that can revitalize the spirit, just as much as it can signal the end of something or someone that we are beholden by. This is the main lesson for the short story “Spikes”, which first appeared in Michael Chabon’s 1999 bestselling book, Werewolves in our Youth.

The story follows Kohn, a man who is both depressed and alone in the midst of a nasty divorce, which partly seems to have been either made worse or caused by the death of their first child. As we are introduced to Kohn, it is quickly apparent that his shaky relationships with his soon-to-be ex-wife, his divorce lawyer, his therapist and even his own family all serve to cement the isolation that he feels as he struggles to keep up with the curve-balls life has thrown at him. The narrator solidifies this feeling of helplessness, noting that, “They got therapy, but it was a waste of money and time because Kohn didn’t like to talk in front of the therapist. He grieved at odd moments, privately, minutely, invisibly almost even to himself. He did not, it was certainly true, grieve enough. He withdrew.”(pg. 127). In this way, most of the introductory narration is written perfectly to capture Kohn’s feelings of helplessness and introversion, solidifying his status as the odd-man-out and reflecting the fourth stage of grief: depression.

The grieving process of is a healing pain that can revitalize the spirit, just as much as it can signal the end of something or someone that we are beholden by.

However, as we mentioned earlier, this is a remarkable story about learning to grow from loss. It would be a grave mistake to misjudge the main point of this story, just as Kohn’s wife Amy mistook her husband’s introversion; she misunderstood it to be shyness, and later for a lack of grief or remorse for the loss of their child.

As soon as Kohn internalizes his own lack of grief in the opening narration, the story opens up and we are introduced to Bengt, the small child that lives next door to Kohn. Kohn’s dialogue with Bengt — the neighbor boy who must play on the baseball team, despite his own hatred for the sport — introduces a new layer of conflict to the story, as Bengt reveals his own troubles of dealing with the absence of his father, who had drowned at sea, and of being one of the weakest players on his baseball team. Just like that, Kohn — a father without a son, who lost his own child that was with him “for the length of a baseball season” (pg. 127), is able to connect with Bengt, the child without a father.

Credit: Wikipedia

The synchronicity of Kohn’s meeting with Bengt opens up a whole new world of possibilities for the grieving pair. Ironically, while the two connect with each other through their hatred of baseball and in need to fill the respective voids that each has lost, it is the act of working together to train for a baseball game that brings them together and ultimately helps Kohn let go of his petty fights with his lawyer and his wife. In this way, the “mindless” activity of practicing on the field is almost parallel to the same level of catharsis that can come from shoveling dirt onto the grave at a Jewish funeral ceremony.

While this story is unconventional as a story of grief, at the end of the day, it provides us with a beautiful image of how the most unexpected people can help us through a difficult time, teaching us to make the most of what we have and to be comfortable with ourselves.

Related SevenPonds Articles:

• Film Review: Transforming Loss (2013) by Judith R. Burdick
• Not Just Another Batman Costume: San Francisco Is Gotham City for a Day!
• The Jewish Mourning Tradition of Shiva