Email To My Brother: Selfless

For pop's birthday, I like to get him useful things.
     Like Spider-Man comic books.
     Something he can read to help pass the time. I also like to get him gift certificates to those very same comic book shops I like to frequent. That way, he can buy whichever ones he wants. I might be a Spider-Man fan, but that doesn’t mean pop wouldn’t like more of a variety.
     One time, on the internet, I found a bunch of old issues of the National Lampoon magazine. I LOVED that magazine. I read it all the time in high school, and then in college. It’s a humor publication, and I know pop likes to laugh, so I got them for him for Christmas, and he really enjoyed them, too. He told me just that when he gave them back to me after he was done reading them.
     You know how pop loves music?
     Well, those vinyl Grand Funk Railroad albums I told you about--The ones I used to listen to all the time when I was a long-haired teen? The ones I found at a used vinyl store?--I bought them and gave them to him for his listening pleasure. They were the ones I told you cost $5.99 & $11.99, respectively.
     “Who is this?” he wanted to know.
     “It’s a classic rock band,” I told him. “From the 70s.”
     I knew he’d appreciate the historical value of those albums. Also, hard rock is a type of music you have to play very loud, so, even with pop’s being hard of hearing, he’ll be able to listen to it.
     “This is too much good music,” he told me as he gave me the albums back. “I want you to enjoy it, too.”
     I took him a case of Ensure that I bought at Sam’s, he was grateful, but I noticed you had already bought him some, so I snuck it back with me when I left. I didn’t want it to go bad. Plus, I’ve found out in life that people THINKING you’ve given them something is just as good as your having given them something.
     It’s in the Bible.
 
 

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Email To My Brother: Generations

Maybe the generations that came before us--our dad, our granddad, the granddads before him--had the right idea.
     You just sit around and puff on a cigar and let the older folks with no sense be physical or fuss with the young pups. Dad may have a lot of surgeries, but none of them were for a torn meniscus or a bad anterior horn, whatever THAT is. Our grandfather, too. It took a bad turkey to knock him out of the game. Physically, he was in perfect shape to do the things he did, which was sit in the patio and puff on his cigar.

     If they could see you, they'd laugh at that wussy surgery you're having.

     "How did you hurt yourself?" our father might ask.

     "I fell when I took my grandson to the park."

     "Son, if there's anything I tried to teach you, it was to NEVER do anything with your kids. Doing things with your kids just snags away the time you could be chasing after women. As for your grandkids, if you can't do it sitting on the couch, then it's not worth doing."

     Speaking of dad, he's doing the same. When you left on Saturday, he said, "It was nice of your brother to come visit me."

     "Yes, pop," I said. "It was."

     "He looks OLD," he said."Older than ME. "
     I just agreed.
     Who am I to tell him that he's wrong, especially when he isn't?

     Our sister told me that during those few days you stayed with her, her daughter saw a big-headed ghost that would wander the house in the middle of the night, searching through their underwear drawers, under their beds, and in their closets. And then the ghost would drift out the kitchen door leading to the backyard.

     "Are you sure it's not your daughter's medical marijuana that's causing her to see that ghost?" I asked.

     "No," our sister said, "because, when we checked the backyard the next day, there were FOOTPRINTS all over the backyard where the storage shed is. We went into the storage shed and everything was moved around, like the ghost was searching for something. Actually, they ghost left the storage shed in better condition than it was originally in."

     As I thought about our sister's story, I remembered how you left town so quickly.

     Hmm...

     "By the way," I asked her, "do you still have that hallow bomb shell of pop's from World War Two? The one our brother always wanted?"

     "Heck," she said, "my ex-husband sold that for the copper years ago."
 
 

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Email To My Brother: How Did He Die?

Did you hear the news report about a 92-year-old lady by the name of Anna Mae Blessing who shot her 72-year-old son because he was going to put her in an assisted living facility?
     Now I know why you keep your guns in a safe.
      “You took my life, so I'm taking yours,” she said, but I’m not sure exactly when, and I'm also not sure where the incident took place--Fake News wasn’t specific--but it sounds like something you always hear happening in Albuquerque or Florida.
      Anna Mae also tried to shoot her now-dead son’s 57-year-old girlfriend, but the younger woman managed to wrestle the gun away from her. I say, if you can't wrestle the gun out of a 92-year-old lady's hand, you don't deserve to live.
      “Do you have any children?” someone might ask her in the other assisted living facility called prison.
     “I had a son,” she could answer, wiping away a single tear, “but he’s dead.”
     “Oh, that’s a shame. Nobody should have to bury their child. How did he die?”
     “I shot him.”
 
 

Raising My Father

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After The Car Ride

My father was quite the lothario as a young man.
     And as an old geezer, too.
     Recently, we were having lunch, and he told the friendly waitress who came up to greet us, "Where have you been all my life?"
     The young girl laughed.
     Fortunately, now that I think about it, considering the times we live in.
     "To tell the truth, sir," she told him, sweetly, "I wasn't around for most of it."
 
 

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The Car Ride

I was driving in a car with my father recently.
     We were on our way to lunch.
     On my dime.
     I don't want to say I don't believe the doctor who told me that my father suffers from pre-Alzheimer's, but sometimes I think it's mighty convenient that whenever we go out to eat at a restaurant my father always forgets to reach for his wallet.
     Anyway, what happened next made me lose my appetite.
     "Did you just cut one?" I asked my father.
     My father gave me an innocent look.
     "Of course I did, son," he told me. "Do you think I always smell like that?"
 
 

Raising My Father

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You Can't Help The Stupid

as featured in Desert Exposure Magazine

desertexposure.com

 
"I've got some bad news," my buddy Maloney told me.
     It had been awhile since I'd heard from him, so I picked up my phone and gave him a call.
     "How's it going?" he said, when he answered.
     I took his inquiry at face value and began to tell him about my neighbors next door, the ones with the yappy little dogs. They had the Orkin pest control guy over, but he must have dropped the ball because my neighbors were still there the next day.
     "You think you've got problems?" Maloney groused. "I've got some bad news, some really bad news."
     "What happened, Slip?" I asked, using his nickname. There's no conversational road Maloney travels on that he doesn't make a big ol' U-turn right back to himself.
     "We got a call Saturday night. Sofia was in the hospital."
     Sofia is his mother-in-law and she suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes. She had lived with them for a while before listening to her loser friends who convinced her she would be better off living on her own. Maloney was happy to see her leave. He always complained that she loved their dog more than she loved their children.
     That just might be true.
     When his dog was just a puppy and his daughter was a toddler, they took a picture of the two of them together. I've seen the picture, and his daughter looks adorable. When Gail, his wife, showed her mother the picture, she said, "Doesn't she look beautiful?"
     "Yes," her mother agreed. "The puppy looks beautiful."
     The last time I saw Sofia was on Easter, over at Maloney's house. She was chasing after their dog all around the backyard, carrying the mutt's water bowl. She insisted the dog was thirsty, and wanted it to drink, but the dog, always one paw ahead of her, had other ideas.
     Mainly, to get away from her.
     "Nothing more foolish than a man chasin' his hat," Gabriel Byrne, as the Irish gangster Tom Reagan, said in the classic Coen Brother's movie Miller's Crossing.
     Unless it's an old woman chasing after a dog who wants nothing to do with her.
     Still... she was sick.
     "Poor her," I sympathized.
     "Poor HER?" Maloney griped. "Poor ME!"
     At the end of a very long day, Maloney's wife got a call on her cell phone. It was from a friend of her mother's, the latest in a long line of bad decisions concerning men. He hadn't heard from Sofia in a while, and became concerned, so he went over to see if her wallet was okay.
     "Why couldn't he have waited a few days before checking on her?" Maloney lamented.
     "That's a horrible thing to say," I told him.
     "It's okay, my wife's not here. Actually," he continued, "her 'friend' suffers from high blood pressure, too, and Sofia gives him her blood pressure medication. He had probably run out, went over to get some more, and found her passed out on the floor. That was why she ended up in the hospital. Her blood pressure was through the roof."
     "He's on Medicare. Why doesn't he just get his own?"
     "Exactly."
     When my buddy and his wife got to the hospital, Gail immediately started crying. Her heart broke when she saw her poor mother laying there, frail and broken. Maloney took the opportunity to pull the doctor to the side.
     "Was it a stroke?" Maloney asked him.
     The reason he thought it might be a stroke was because Sofia's 'friend' had told them that the left side of her face fell, but "she always looks like that," Maloney assured me. He also noticed that she didn't look so bad in the ER, either. "Probably faking," was his prognosis.
     The doctor assured him it wasn't a stroke.
     Maloney hesitated.
     "Give it to me straight, doc," he finally said, bracing himself for some bad news, "is my mother-in-law going to have to move in with us?"
     Fortunately, the answer to that was also no. However, before they went home from the hospital, the doctor warned them, "She has to take her blood pressure medication, or the next time it will be a stroke."
     "You hear that, Sofia?" Maloney chastised her. "You have to take your medicine. No more giving it to your boyfriend."
     "He's not my boyfriend," she said, avoiding the point. "He's just my friend."
     Sofia was touched. She thought her son-in-law was concerned for her well-being, and he was, but only so far as it affected whether she would move in with him or not.
     When she was released, they took her to their home to recuperate, but Sofia only stayed with them for a few days, her daughter weathering her insults while caring for her. Maloney was impressed by how much food she was able to shovel into the sweet spot of her digestive system while she was there.
     "Her illness sure didn't affect her appetite," he told me.
     "What are we going to do if my mother gets sick?" his wife wanted to know. "I mean, really sick."
     Maloney didn't even have to think about it.
     "If she move in, I'm moving out," he told his wife, drawing a line in the sand.
     "I'll miss you," his wife said, stepping over that line, "or maybe not."
     Sadly, the story ended there.
     "I've got to go," Maloney told me, cutting the conversation short. "My wife's home."
     I smiled to myself.
     Later, as I was retelling his story to my lovely wife in our kitchen, my father, who was sitting in the great room watching TV, must have turned up the volume  on his hearing aid so he could eavesdrop, because he snorted in amused contempt.
     "You can't help the stupid," he chuckled.
 

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