My father: Good God!
I look at his life and think of it as tragedy. Truly heart-breaking tragedy.
- His mother going off the deep end
- His bigotry: given that THEY WEREN’T WHITE!
- That he dropped out of school
- My mother, the love of his life, killing herself with tobacco
- Me thinking that I was better than him: what a little twit!!
- Why didn’t he go to work for Metzgers Dairy in Texas, as his brother did? The brother became an executive with that outfit.
- Actually, he did have a delivery route for them, when he was a young pup. Why didn’t he get further?
- Apparently, it was spending hours watching the rear ends of horses as he delivered milk around the countrified environs of Ft. Worth, then a hick town in the middle of nowhere.
- So, it was off to join the Navy!
- And from there, to move on to the Merchant Marine.
- Why did he dislike queers…uhm, gay men…so much…but also enjoy the company of teenaged boys to a surprising degree? What WAS he trying to say to us? Or…to not say?
Every glance at the man’s life brings up a slew of questions. But…isn’t that so of everyone?
Possibly he and my mother shouldn’t have moved to Sun City, here in balmy Arizona. If they had stayed in Southern California (whence they came), would a competent doctor there have recognized her cancer in time to save her?
Probably not.
Smoking tobacco should never have been legal. The accursed, poisonous stuff should have been banned the minute it was proven that smoking that shit causes cancer, and that it is addictive.
Some doctor should have had the wherewithal to at least TRY to talk my mother into quitting.
My father should have insisted that she quit, at the same time he did.
Their horrific experience in the Sun City nursing home, as she lay dying, should have been actionable. We should have sued that outfit.
Why didn’t DXH, a partner in a heavy-hitting law firm, suggest that? Probably because I’d already taken up with TJK and so he didn’t give a damn about my family.
My father shouldn’t have had to transport my mother 20 miles from Sun City into North Central Phoenix to get decent nursing-home care.
DXH and I shouldn’t have blithely acquiesced to my father’s proposal that he marry the Dragon Lady, after my mother had died. We should have suggested he wait for a year. And during that year, we should have socialized with him, taken him on trips, had him meet people.
I should never have taken up with TJK. By the time my mother got sick, DXH probably didn’t want to have anything to do with any of us.
Hmmmm…. Y’know…about a third of my life shouldn’t have happened…
