To Designated Survivors

I. For the President: You been chosen to survive. The president is giving the State of the Union and all of the very most important will be there. Should our enemy decide to blow up the building, someone needs to be at the ready. Nuclear codes in the briefcase. Security detail. Access codes and the keys to the White House. You’re the one. Not special enough to be required at the speech, but apparently special enough to become the most powerful leader in the world at a time of crisis. You take this as a compliment. Your daughter is so proud.

 II. For the Baby: You have also been chosen to survive. The doctor sits beside you and your partner, hands you your baby. Six weeks old. He is about to die. Five days ago, in a conference room and lots of lab coats, a long wooden table, they started to map out for you what was happening and though they could not confirm the disease precisely, they could confirm it was fatal. The scribbles on the whiteboard make less and less sense the more and more you try. The doctor suggests you have some decisions to make, but really you don’t. Or rather, the decision to have to make is so simple: how and when to survive this.

You have to make a decision. Then, you make it. But you never make peace with it.

III. For Your Partner: Finally, you, too, have been chosen. She says the doctor has good news. She will take a leave from work until she is better. Finally, a light at the end of the tunnel. Next summer, you'll buy a boat and the kids will learn to sail. You have worked so hard on your life together and now, after decades, it’s starting to pay off. You go to dinner and she looks happy or relieved, if there’s a difference. She does not survive the night and you bury her a week later.

Sometimes the designated survivor has warning, a notice or a note. But then, sometimes, “Tag.” And you’re it. The nuclear option has been deployed. The devastation is complete, but you are the chosen one. You move into this house. People will call you strong. They will say they could never do what you are doing. As if there is a choice. Strength is not the carrying on despite the weight of grief in the midst of chaos. Just the opposite: we endure this sudden weightlessness, the unsettling and violent calm.