Which is when you woke up and squinted through cataracts. “What kind of place you running around here, huh?” I barked. I called the nurse and gave her a piece of my mind. On the last day I saw you alive, you had your face in a plate of mashed potatoes. Somewhere along the way you decided it was OK to sprinkle F-bombs into our conversation. Because up until those last days when you still remembered who I was, you remained pissed at the world. I do my best to take your advice, but wonder if you ever took it yourself. “If you ain’t happy, sonny, it’s your own goddamned problem,” you said. It’s already too late.” You insisted I do everything now. “If you’re waiting for the right time to do your thing, forget it. When I asked you for some generic advice you told me not to waste any time. I want to roll down the window and take a deep gulp of air. When I think about the light you saw, the one that said it wasn’t ready for you yet, I think about that smell. Your truck’s cab smelled like a dead fish. When you told me about the time you died, you had to pull over the truck to wipe your tears. Someone inevitably would look at you funny and you’d be like, “What the fuck’s that guy’s problem?” When you laughed, your wide-open mouth flashed gold and silver teeth, a treasure chest stained by years of unfiltered cigarettes and strong coffee. You were a natural entertainer, a real vaudevillian who missed the call. Mostly because I loved watching strangers respond to your abrasive words.
And even though your ice-breakers were terribly embarrassing, often sounding like a bad pick-up line, I endured. Just something to keep it from being mistaken for someone else’s. The final one, the one on your last painting-a portrait of the stray cat you took in-was simple. Early stuff was all flowy and pretentious.
Your signature changed over the years, yet it always remained in the right corner. The only place you added color was in the space between air and water. My favorite piece of yours was a breaching gray whale. They filled your studio and over time got covered in dust. You painted with the tiniest of black dots and won heaps of blue ribbons at the California state fair. You loved General Custer even though you called him an “Indian killer.” Your ability to create art was sort of a paradox. You taught me about volcanoes and the Golden Gate Bridge and obsidian. And if what you told me is true, you gave them sons-a-bitches a piece of your mind. A family who, decades later, came knocking because gram’s family had left her some money and, by god, they needed some of it. Back to the sticks and your stoic family. You knew if you bucked the system it was back to the farm with you. In uniform you found a place amongst similar rule-following men. Came home from the service after the war all rigid and heavy-handed. Like, a lot.įamily lore is truth, right? Which means you were a verbally abusive narcissist. And gramps, the stuff you did before I knew you hurt a lot of people. But make no mistake, I spent a lot of time covering for you, too. I loved you because, to me, you were lovable. Which was a less assholeish version of the you my mom knew.
And she was right, you had had a good life. “He had a good life,” she said before you died. You were a fraction of the man she married. Gram didn’t mind, or didn’t seem to anyway. You slipped into a childhood brogue and cried your little green eyes out like a baby. Which is when she became another face in the crowd. “She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me,” you said. Louis heritage and how your unlikely ass linked up with the likes of my grandma. Of your shoeless childhood and all those bread scraps tossed at you by that old German baker. Been a while since I thought of you, old man.
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