Every day while growing up, if Jeopardy was airing and my father was home: our TV was tuned to precisely that. He’d shout out the answers before most contestants, solidifying his place in my mind as a human encyclopedia. My mom would implore him to try out for the show, and I’ll never understand why he didn’t. But as I grew older and absorbed book after book, it became a contest between us to see who could shout out the question/answer first.
The tables turned, in a way, and though he continued to have an edge against me, he started asking *me* to audition for the show. Whether he wanted to live vicariously through me or just thought my odds of winning were better (they weren’t), I’m really not sure.
Little by little a few years ago, he stopped beating contestants to the punch—and then stopped responding altogether—and I became suspicious. But then my mom found all of his crossword puzzle books in the trash, and I knew: something was terribly wrong. As his condition deteriorated, I would sometimes think back on the Jeopardy era of our lives and would break down into panicked, crocodile tears. Gasping for air, shaking, unable to reconcile the present with the past.
When his disease (Lewy Body) got the best of him, and his time with us was running out, I struggled to find a way to pass the hours and bring him peace. I read some of his favorite poems to him; I played some of his favorite songs; I played soothing sounds of nature and daydreamed about stealing his hospital bed away to the woods and letting him die where he was most at peace.
At one point between the pacing and the reading, I momentarily turned the TV in his room to Jeopardy, so he could hear his favorite show one final time. And then I turned it off, because I feared it was torture not just for me: but for him, too.
And now I hear Alex Trebek has joined him in death and for some reason the screen is blurry as I type this, and I can’t breathe, and all I can think about is how desperately I would like to return to my parents’ living room and hear Alex read the answers: and my dad shout out the questions just one more time.