Some of the things we did when I was little would probably horrify Child Protective Services.

Car wheels on a gravel road, I remember vividly being four years old sitting on the arm rest of a 69 Plymouth whose floorboards had rusted away, no seat belt, let alone a car seat, going for a ride with you and Poppy.  The omnipresent blue cooler close at hand: PBR for Poppy and Miller Lite for you, throwing the cans out of the holes in the floor.  You definitely weren’t much of an environmentalist. 

Thanks to you, my Heaven better have a section of Salt Creek on a cool day when the crappie are bighting.  A fresh supply of pickled bologna, crackers, and colby at hand and enough bait to make sure our bucket of little panfish would turn into a pile of fresh fillets coated in cracker meal to be fried in an electric skillet.  I have yet to taste fish that rivals.  We’ll have some when I meet you there. 

I wish I could have snagged your 78 Caprice with the bubble back window before you sold it, white with sky blue interior.  Its eternal reek of Vantage 100’s present even after you had quit for two years. 

The long winter after Poppy died when I was eleven, I remember sitting up with you and your insomnia, watching QVC while you fidgeted, trying to do something to occupy your racing mind like the rest of us mourning your husband of forty years, our Poppy.  I can see us laughing as you did your hair in a snow storm, curlers and Aquanet at the kitchen table.  It turned out perfect.  All dolled up and nowhere to go!

We ate chili instead and watched the snow pile on the deck. 

The spring after you were sawn in half for a quadruple by-pass.  You smoked your last cigarette in the parking lot on the way into Saint Francis and never touched another.  I hope to thrown them down soon too. 

Six years ago, we got the confirmation.  Lung carcinoma.  Ever the fighter, you held on two years.  I’m so glad you got to see O Brother ,where art thou?.  You had lived that childhood in tar paper shacks you could throw a dog through, driven model A Fords with your cousins working the floor pedals while another one steered, you watched Lake Monroe flood and claim Grandma Crider’s house.  You lived to see me become a man of 24 years.  

Your last week, Kelli and I being the witches we are, knew you were going to go.  I didn’t work.  I spent every minute talking with you.  Diabetes be damned, you were going to have every sweet we could rustle up with a side of Oxycontin and a cup of coffee.  I still remember your last meal when you finally had to go to the hospital.  Mom and I got you a big honking slice of Lemon Meringue pie..your favorite.  

I went home on May 6th to 115 S Bryan Avenue, ate a handful of Xanax and half slept.  The phone rang and I knew, poor Mom in her tired Abraham Lincoln demeanor said, ”Brad, you better get up here, her fingernails are turning blue.”  I flew to Bloomington Hospital and gathered around the death bed.  For all practical purposes you were gone.  Morphine shots left you to be nothing but moans and what sounded like a greasy paper sack rattling in your chest.  Kelli bent down, said “Brad’s here, we’re all here.”  Mom nodded to the nurse for another shot of morphine.  One gasp, two gasps, then, the last rattle.  I touched your hand.  It felt like cold lunch meat.  We wailed in relief and grief.

I still see you in all of us who possess your blood, and for that I am thankful.  So, today, I think I will play hookey, get a bucket of minnows, a six pack of cheap beer, a folding chair, pack up a fishing pole, and commune with you, making sure to pick some black-eyed susans to lay where you rest under the Poplar tree.