But it doesn’t matter, because you don’t really have to read the whole book to get it. Shapiro was right. Camus turned a story worth a sentence and a half into a whole book, and let’s face it, he gets his point across in the very first line. The rest of the book, like Shapiro put it, is just the babbling of a French fatty.

“There is only one really serious philosophical question,” he writes, “and that is suicide.”

That’s it. That’s the gist of it.

I think any normal person thinks about suicide at least once in his life. Not necessarily seriously, but at least superficially considers what would happen if he decided to end his life. The only person I know who never even thought about it once is Grandpa. Even though he never stopped talking about death, I am certain the idea of ending his own life never crossed his mind. He clung to life the way he had clung to Grandma Miriam, as if he never even knew that leaving of his own free will was an option.

Dad, on the other hand, had considered the matter carefully. Apparently, like with everything else in his life, he thought it through, weighing the pros and cons, factoring in the various considerations and implications. Eventually, the last thing he ever did on this planet was depart from it the only way he knew how—not as an impulsive decision, but in a premeditated, carefully planned move.

He had begun taking out life insurance policies a year and a half ago. As of now, I know of at least four different ones. I’m guessing a few more will pop up soon. I don’t know if back then he had already decided he was going to go through with it, or whether he just wanted to keep suicide as an option.

It was only a few days after the funeral, as I was tidying up his study, that I started learning new things about him, all these little bits of information I never knew. It’s crazy how much you can learn about a person from a few forms. Especially about a person like Dad. Maybe that’s why he didn’t bother leaving a note. He probably knew there was enough information to explain everything.

There were receipts from all the psychiatric treatments he had undergone. Dozens of prescriptions for the pills he’d taken over the years. According to the dates on the receipts, most of the treatments had taken place after Mom left, but not all. And some of the prescriptions for antidepressants were issued before I was even born. I also found insurance policies he had signed. I even saw my own signature on some of them, although I had no memory of signing them. Maybe it was when he made Grandpa sign those private health insurance forms before he enlisted. He knew I wouldn’t read them.