Death and Dying

They unplugged Dad this morning, and he's supposed to die tonight. It's numbing, even though expected. My sister just called again, they (finally) have him calmed down, and he's off everything but Atavan (?) and morphine. He won't let go because of Mom and he's put up quite the battle, but all his organs are in failure. It was painful to see him, a year ago, and I don't think I'll go down for "the services", especially not on a holiday weekend, and just have a quiet wake here. Drink a couple of those insipid beers he favored, fry fish and hush-puppies, with raw onions on the side. I disagreed with him about almost everything, but we were still good fishing companions, and he taught me a lot about the natural world. How to smell where fish were spawning, to look for horizontal movement out of the corner of my eye, to wait for two quail to cross. The hours we spent in a boat, not talking, watching that angle, where the line met the water, stretch on forever. I don't want to think about class distinctions, but it's hard not to, that period after the Second World War, all those vets. The labor pool that made it possible for the rich to get very rich. A job in Detroit paid more money in a week than you might get for a year of hoeing cotton. Not to mention heating a one room shack with dried corn cobs. I've pieced together a history. It's not a complete fabrication, a few names, a trace bit of historical record. Dad had two half-sisters he never met. I know his Mom was Dovey, the youngest of either eleven or thirteen Pruitt kids (there was a tendency to not name a new-born until it looked like it might live) and that when she died, after birthing two girls (Pearl and Bee) and him, Buren Jackson (BJ, in the southern tradition); Mack Bridwell remarried in Oxford, Mississippi, and had two more daughters. My step-aunts. I know there were three boys, Mack, who moved to Mississippi, Tom, who moved to Texas, and Noel, who kept the home place in Ohio. The Pruitt family (Dovey's side) passed the loose kids around as needed. I'll write about his later, when my mind starts working. I blew off everything else, after a quick trip to town, to sit and remember, and wait for the phone call. Mindless On The Ridge. I got a good bottle of whiskey (Dad never drank whiskey) in town, and bought a slab of ribs to cook the way that I've modified over the years from the way he did them. Food was always a big thing, even when the pickings were slim. Being a military family eliminated the fear of starving to death. Mess halls and the base commissaries, where everything was extremely cheap, and the only problem was that you had to move frequently, and friendships were ephemeral. Dad read, Mom less so, he read Westerns and Rex Stout, and John D. McDonald, so there were books around the house. Also factor in that he was Navy, and was therefore on sea duty, two years out of four, and often in Japan, far from home, or someplace, the Mediterranean a couple of times. He always brought us presents. For years, the once or twice they went out, Mom would dab on JOY, and that huge floral, Dad had brought back from France, would electrify the room. He had an odd quirk when it came to food. He absolutely wanted every food item discreet, no mixing. This might come from eating unidentified gruel as a small child. He was the grill master when we'd rent a fish shack cabin for an over-night. These shacks, at every back-woods fish camp in the south, were usually two rooms, with a kitchen counter and cold running water; perfect in every way if all you want to do is fish. BJ was a serious fisherman, but cool about it too, always content to just settle back with a beer and argue politics. Michael calls and sees my connection problem as a two part thing. I agree. I have to change the way I work. Of course, sure, I can do that; AND he assures me that we can recover this, what I'm writing now, the ten or so pages held in limbo. His mom has already instructed him to recover those pages. I'm in good hands. Moms, even if they're not Jewish, make demands. Of course nothing makes sense, it's a gypsy nightmare. And it's in Hungarian. Please. In the future, consider the pluperfect. What might have been, or what might still be. I have to go, collect myself.