Healings FAQ No. 1, Rob Harvilla (Redux)

"I’m glad you’re asking people this but I wish you hadn’t asked me specifically."

Hello, happy Sunday. I dunno if anyone noticed or cared, but last week we notched our twentieth installment of the Healings FAQ. We published our first one of these on April 25, and have been doing them every Sunday since. That’s a pretty good run! Nearly the length of an NFL season, and with way fewer concussions.

Partly out of recognition of this milestone, and partly (mostly) because this past week was crazy work-wise and I needed a break, I’m re-running the very first FAQ we did back in April, featuring the one and only Rob Harvilla. Rob deserves special props because when I asked him to do this several months ago, it was very much unclear if anyone else would agree to it. It was just some idea I had, and a fairly underdeveloped one at that. But I asked Rob and he said yes. It was the kind of favor you only get to ask once to the guy who sang Billy Joel’s “Just the Way You Are” at your wedding. 

And lest you think Rob is just a guest from my wedding—list you think he’s just some guy I used to go to see reviled ‘00s dance-punk bands with and whose buddy once gave me my insulin shot during a drunken ramble through the streets of Austin during one of several SXSW fests we both attended—lest you think he’s just some dude I went to an untold number of Oakland A’s games with, drinking prodigiously before, during, and after, throwing hats and other apparel onto the field (me and my other drunken friends did; Rob was mostly sober), to the extent that we were actually kicked out once or twice—lest you think Rob is just some amigo I used to play epic battle royale games of Halo with on Xboxes that were physically chained together with long ethernet cables, then spaced haphazardly throughout a San Francisco Victorian apartment with enough distance to facilitate a lot of inter-hallway hooting and yelling, itself mostly fueled by large amounts of cheap beer—lest you think Rob is just another suburban Ohian dad with an amazing family and a tightknit group of friends, one of whose actual nicknames is Bumpin’ Cats Mike—lest you think he’s merely and only any of those things, let me tell you this: Rob also has a podcast! 

It’s called “60 Songs that Explain the ‘90s,” and it’s the inspiration for Rob’s book of the same name, which is out in paperback on Nov 12. So there. 

Anyway, here’s the inaugural installment of the Healings FAQ that Rob did. The pull quote I used for this could pretty much be this series’ motto: "I’m glad you’re asking people this but I wish you hadn’t asked me specifically." Enjoy.

What happens when we die? 

Oof. I grew up Catholic, with the attendant ideas of Absolute Heaven (sounds suspiciously idyllic and also, per the Talking Heads song, kinda boring) and Absolute Hell (sounds cruel and wildly disproportionate). And while my faith in that specific idea has wavered, I do believe there is Something, some accounting, some way to measure how hard you tried to be a Good Person (or not). I start capitalizing random words when I get nervous. This question makes me nervous. I am tempted to say those who fall short or just generally act like dickheads are given some opportunity to Go Back and Get It Right (see, I’m still nervous), but that’s basically reincarnation, which is not so much a Catholic thing. I’m glad you’re asking people this but I wish you hadn’t asked me specifically. 

On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being terrified and 1 being it’s never crossed your mind, how afraid are you of dying? Explain.  

It’s weird to say I’m a 3 or a 4, but it’s the truth. I don’t think about it much. I should think about it more often. We have a 3-year-old daughter now, and when I start doing the math—when she’s THIS age, I’ll be THAT age—that’s when it starts crossing my mind / terrifying me, and so then I just stop doing the math. For my wife and I, watching our parents deal with various health struggles and various tribulations—that’s the hardest, the most alarming, the most sobering, the most Yeah Now This Is Legitimately Terrifying part. Put me down for 5 or 6 actually.  

What’s the closest you’ve come to death? What did you learn, if anything? 

I’ve been outrageously fortunate. I know that. My parents are still around for me to worry about: That alone is outrageously fortunate. I’ve had a couple minor health scares, but most of my closest friends—the guy who runs this newsletter, for example—put my woes to shame. For me to even tapdance around this question any further feels somehow disrespectful. I’m enormously lucky, and I know it, and yet somehow I know that I don’t really know the half of it.  

Do you believe in God? Explain. 

I do. I believe in some higher power, some organizing principle, some force beyond my comprehension. It stresses me out when I start trying to fill in the details, so I mostly don’t. My lapsed Catholicism shames me a little—my parents have had their own spiritual journey, but my dad plays drums in the church band, and my mom reads and prays and studies and radiates such kindness that I realize I should be way less glib and noncommittal about this. “Lapsed Catholic” does not mean “not Catholic anymore” but it’s time to fill this picture back in a little.

Do you have a spiritual practice? If so, what is it? If not, why not? 

We don’t. We could blame that on our lapsed Catholicism, and the political dimension driving a lot of that, and the aggressiveness of our COVID precautions keeping us out of church etc. etc. etc., but the fact is that I am not raising my kids the way my parents raised me, not really, and that—surprise—makes me ashamed, or at least a little more aggressively curious about what exactly I am teaching my kids instead. If absolutely nothing else, we need to allow for more reflection, more conversation, more open-mindedness, more acknowledgement that there is more to life than what is directly in front of us. I owe myself that, and my kids that, and not in that order.

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Healings is written by Garrett Kamps and edited by Tommy Craggs. Ayana H. Muwwakkil provides art direction.

Healings is about illness, recovery, spirituality, and related topics, and began in the summer of 2023 as a chronicle of Garrett’s battle with cancer. We make no guarantees that it will hold together, thematically speaking, now or ever.

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