Posts Tagged ‘death’

The Little Town That Couldn’t Anymore

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve been quiet online this week because I’m in Kansas vis­it­ing fam­ily.  We left in the late after­noon on Wednesday and drove to Hays, Kansas that night.  The next morn­ing, we drove to my parent’s home south of Kansas City.  Friday was spent in Topeka for a funeral ser­vice and then Carbondale for the after-​​mourning meal. I for­get what you call that offi­cially.   What it ends up being is a huge buf­fet of every­thing from pasta to buf­falo wings.  We’re a big fam­ily.  We eat heartily.

I’ve been awash with minor obser­va­tions about Kansas this trip, as I always seem to be.  I’ve lived else­where for 15 years now, and I feel like I have an outsider’s per­spec­tive.  I feel like a mostly neu­tral observer.  Sometimes not neu­tral at all.

It’s spec­tac­u­larly green this year, although the rain has been man­age­able and there hasn’t been any flood­ing yet.  It was in the 60s when we arrived and it hit 92 yes­ter­day.   I love the coun­try­side, but the weather is doing every­thing it can to make it mis­er­able for me to enjoy.  I’ve adapted myself to life in the dry moun­tains.  Humidity makes me look like the vil­lain from The Incredibles, espe­cially my hair.

Since Saturday, we’ve been holed up in the mon­ster of a house in which my mother, step-​​father, and younger sis­ter live.  It’s some­thing like 3500 square feet, and pretty much my idea of a dream home at nearly 100 years old.  The only prob­lem is that it’s in Osawatamie, The Little Town That Couldn’t.

Once, this was a thriv­ing place, with rail­road work to be had and the creepy state men­tal hos­pi­tal up on the hill over­look­ing the town, which sits nes­tled between the junc­tions of the Osage and Potawatomie Rivers.  The hos­pi­tal only houses the crim­i­nally insane and the rail­road work left a long time ago.  What’s left is a depressed and decay­ing lit­tle place just too far south of Kansas City to turn into a com­muter burb.  Although nearly every­one who lives here works in the city now, if they work at all.

I went for a walk this morn­ing as peo­ple were get­ting into their cars and headed to their jobs.  There wasn’t as much traf­fic as you’d expect.  It was actu­ally very quiet along some of the roads.  The houses were once beau­ti­ful Victorians, but now are decay­ing, with bowed porches and paint-​​chipped flanks fac­ing dusty gravel alleys.  Every once and a while, you see some kid’s toys in the yard, but mostly the yards are empty, mostly well-​​kept.  None of them are weed-​​ridden and com­pletely aban­doned.  But there are dozens and dozens of for sale signs.

My mom and I went to break­fast and she pointed out some of the houses and told me how much they wanted for them.  “That one’s listed at sixty-​​five thou­sand.”  “That’s a shame, those peo­ple worked really hard on that place.  The bank’s only ask­ing thirty-​​five grand for it.”

I’d been pick­ing up on this sense of loss, sad­ness, and depres­sion since I arrived, but the sto­ries told by these for sale signs really gives a voice to that feel­ing.   Add to that the lit­tle shops in their down­town area.  No restau­rants or cof­fee shops here; just “antique” (junk) shops, an over-​​priced elec­tron­ics store, a bar­ber shop, a cou­ple of banks,  and a lot of empty store­fronts. There’s a bed and break­fast down the street the size of a small man­sion that sold for $300,000 about 6 years ago and is listed at $150,000 today.   It sits empty on the main street, win­dows dark.

And really, who the hell would come to stay in a B&B here?  What would they come to see?  John Brown’s cabin?  An old church made of lime­stone?  You can see those sights in an hour, and then hit the road for more inter­est­ing places.  They’re not going to stay for the meth houses that keep crop­ping up along Main Street.

When my par­ents first moved here in 2001, things were grow­ing slowly.  They had a Sears and a tire store, and a few more restau­rants.   In 2008 or so, the town suf­fered hor­ri­ble flood­ing, and the local econ­omy never had a chance to recover thanks to the national econ­omy tank­ing shortly afterward.

Each time I visit, it’s a lit­tle more quiet, a lit­tle more sad and empty.  My par­ents want out, des­per­ately want to sell and get closer to the city, but nobody’s buy­ing.  When I talk to my Mom about it, it reminds me of how I felt in Wyoming; trapped within the geog­ra­phy of it all.  I could escape tem­porar­ily, but for a while I didn’t think I would ever get away.   Luckily, things can change.  They just take some time.

The low prop­erty costs plus the prox­im­ity to Kansas City would seem to indi­cate that Osawatomie just might recover some day.  That’s assum­ing gas prices don’t spi­ral so com­pletely high that the whole town is aban­doned overnight, any­way.   But then maybe the city will put in a light rail sys­tem that comes through the area.  Suddenly Osawatomie would be a very desir­able place to live.  If I were a local politi­cian, I’d be aim­ing to make that hap­pen.  But I’m just an out­side observer.

I  call it the Little Town That Couldn’t Anymore.  Its glory days are behind it.  But I can’t help but hope for some opti­mistic future. Things like towns don’t die eas­ily in my expe­ri­ence, espe­cially not ones that are 150 years old.

I want it to be the Little Town that Will.    Why?  I guess that’s just the kind of weird, pes­simistic opti­mist I am.  And I hate to see any­thing die—town, per­son, or ideal.

Memories of a Grandfather

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Yesterday was the anniver­sary of my mother’s father’s death, Donald Ackors.  Actually, as  I write this, it’s today, as I tend to write posts the day before and then sched­ule them.

I want some­how to sum­ma­rize in a few short words what kind of man he was.  What kind of impact he had on me.  There’s more than just his genes in my blood.  Bits of his char­ac­ter, his per­son­al­ity, have passed on to me too.  I feel like the more I under­stand the man, the more I under­stand myself.

I have his ears, when it comes to phys­i­cal traits.  I have enor­mous ears that stick out from my fat head.  When I was younger, this was espe­cially dis­con­cert­ing and kids called me “Dumbo.”  Any time I got upset about it, I remem­ber my grand­fa­ther show­ing me how he wig­gled his ears, and I felt bet­ter about it for a while.

He worked most of his life at a Goodyear tire fac­tory.  All the details about the tire plant in  “Work, With Occasional Mole Men” come from grow­ing up around him. The lay­offs, the strikes, the long late shifts.  My grand­fa­ther worked nights for much of my early child­hood.  We had to be quiet on the front porch next to the bed­room so we didn’t wake him while we played.  I some­times thought of him as a sleep­ing bear in there.  You did not want to poke that bear.

I asked him once, later in life, what he did at his job.  He said “mostly, I sign papers.”  He said he signed so much paper­work, it hurt his arm.  I asked why he couldn’t just get a stamp.  I can’t remem­ber what his answer was, but I know he laughed at that.

God damn, did that guy like to laugh.  He loved laugh­ing and he loved food.  I can’t over­state how much he loved food.  Not fancy food, either.  Anything.  Some days later in life he would spend the after­noon talk­ing and antic­i­pat­ing what­ever they were hav­ing for din­ner.  He loved good Mexican food, and would go to the ends of the Earth for a proper tamale.

He loved fam­ily, too.  He told me once that he wished he had spent more time with them and worked less. Most of us end up with that regret.  Hard to learn that les­son, somehow.

I remem­ber the day I real­ized he was human.  My fam­ily plays a team card game called Pitch.  You cap­ture suites of cards for points and such—I don’t really know how to explain it.  My grand­fa­ther was a demon at it.  I was just learn­ing how, and he was help­ing me, stand­ing over my shoul­der. I was just start­ing to get the han­dle of it, and he gave me some bit of advice and I snapped, “I don’t need your help!”  He walked away with­out a word.  Everyone else got very quiet.  I remem­ber the look on his face, like I’d slapped him.  I felt hor­ri­ble, but I was shocked to know that he could be vul­ner­a­ble to me like that.

He read romance nov­els by the pound.  Seriously, they didn’t by them by the book—they went to a used book store and bought them in tied up gro­cery bags by weight.  I never saw him read­ing any­thing other than a romance novel.  Tough fac­tory worker, born in the desert, a fish­er­man and a hunter.  And he devoured a dozen Harlequin romance nov­els a week.

One of his bud­dies from his time in the mil­i­tary once said: “You never saw Don with­out a book in his pocket.”  He looked like James Dean, but with a romance novel in his pocket.  He got a lot of action back then, or so I am told.

It’s hard to talk about him with­out talk­ing about his wife of 40-​​some years, Janet.   He loved to laugh, and my Grandmother loved to make him laugh.   They bick­ered and ban­tered in a way that I can only aspire to.    After she passed, I asked him once how they had done it—stayed together for so long.

He strug­gled for an answer.  Thought long and hard before speak­ing.  Then he said, sim­ply “I loved her.”  No star­tling wis­dom. Just a sim­ple truth.  He did love her.   We all did.

I can’t actu­ally sum­ma­rize the man in a few words, at least not to do him jus­tice.  He deserves an epic, a biog­ra­phy.  Not just a few words typed up one after­noon on the anniver­sary of his death from a heart attack.  Odd, that he had a pace­maker which was sup­posed to help pre­vent such things.

My mother said that he prob­a­bly felt the thing going off and didn’t do any­thing about it. He missed my grand­mother too much.

The Christmas before that, Sarah and I were back home.  The whole fam­ily gath­ered at the Carbondale City Hall and had a feast.  I asked him ques­tions about what it was like to serve in the UK in the 50s.  I asked him how long he had been over there.  He told me down to the minute. I wish that I remem­bered exactly how long it had been.

It was our… first or sec­ond? Christmas after Janet died.  He had lost a lot of weight and was look­ing good. He was tak­ing care of himself.

When we were get­ting ready to leave, we hugged him and said good­bye.  He never hugged, not ever. He wasn’t that kind of affec­tion­ate.  It was an awk­ward hug, but a long one.

“We’ll see you next year,” I said.  And he gave me a sad look and said “I sure hope so.”

Somehow, he knew that would be the last time we would see each other.  I wish I’d said more then.  I wish I had told him how much of an impact he had on who I was.

But then again, I think some­how he knew with­out me ever say­ing a word.

The Proper Way to Choose Your Funeral Music

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My father’s funeral was, as you can imag­ine, a pretty trau­matic expe­ri­ence and not one I like to think too much about.   Someone assem­bled a video photo col­lage of my father, show­ing pic­tures of him from when he was a baby all the way up to a month or two before his death. The sound­track was two of our favorite songs—Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” and Kansas’s “Dust in the Wind”.  Let me tell you, watch­ing your father repeat­edly move through his life in pho­tographs is a sure way to make sure you never want to lis­ten again to the songs that were the aural back­ground of the experience.

I was think­ing about this the other day as I stared at the box set of Led Zeppelin’s com­plete works, con­sid­er­ing rip­ping the CDs to MP3s.  I inher­ited the discs from my father, and I’m often reminded how much I love their music when I hear the odd song on the radio or in a TV com­mer­cial, but I can’t bring myself to rip the damn things for some rea­son.  Mostly because of the funeral asso­ci­a­tions.  And it struck me—we went about choos­ing the music for his funeral all wrong.

I’m going to leave pre­cise instruc­tions that my favorite songs not be played at my funeral.  Don’t play them at all, any­body, for, like, a year after I die!  I have a much bet­ter idea. 

Here are the 3 songs you are to play at my funeral: “MMMBop” by Hanson, The Chicken Dance song, and, please, please, play “Joy to the World” by Three Dog Night.    I was taunted by that song my entire god­damned child­hood.  Most peo­ple say they would kill Hitler if they had a time machine, but I would make sure Three Dog Night died in a bus crash before work­ing on fix­ing more impor­tant mis­steps in history.

On Giving Up on Fiction Writing

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I’ve been talk­ing about this in pri­vate for a while now, but I’ve decided to talk about it pub­li­cally.  There’s a lot of infor­ma­tion out there about how to start writ­ing, but there’s not a lot writ­ten about how to stop.  Sorry if you’ve heard some of this before.

I’ve been strug­gling with writ­ing since my father’s death a few years ago.  His death was fol­lowed by his brother, then his mother, then both of my mother’s par­ents within a year.  Around the same time, my lit­tle sister’s health prob­lems became sig­nif­i­cant enough that she needed a kid­ney trans­plant.  Our fam­ily was put through the wringer, and I did not come out of it okay.

Early last year, my occa­sional panic attack prob­lem turned into a daily panic attack prob­lem.  Eating any­thing made me feel sick, and feel­ing sick felt like dying, and then I really lost it.  I tried to get help via my med­ical doc­tor, but they were afraid to pre­scribe a high enough dose of any­thing to help me.  I finally gave up and went to a psy­chi­a­trist who quadru­pled the med­ica­tion and finally started get­ting my attacks under con­trol.  The panic attacks had gone on for so long that I had lost over 50 pounds.  After get­ting med­ica­tion work­ing to con­trol the attacks,  I con­tin­ued to lose weight.  Recently, to my dis­may I’ve started to regain some, but that’s a topic for another post.

So it wasn’t until last year that men­tally I was start­ing to come back together.  Prior to my father’s ill­ness, I was pretty solid. I was enthu­si­as­tic and I was very pro­duc­tive as a writer.  I hated Laramie, but liv­ing there moti­vated me some­how to write 1–3 short sto­ries a week.  It was a won­der­ful out­let, and I learned a lot in my time there and started mak­ing my first few big sales.

So come the bad times of the last few years, my pro­duc­tion ground to a halt.  I had been work­ing on a novel loosely based on my father’s child­hood in Kansas in the 70s called Prince Starling when he called to tell me he had can­cer.  I think the coin­ci­dence here dam­aged me in some fun­da­men­tal way inside regard­ing writ­ing.  It broke some con­nec­tion I had to my cre­ative spirit.  The mon­key deep inside some­how decided, ridicu­lously, that by hav­ing used my father’s sto­ries that way, it was some how respon­si­ble for his illness.

I wrote some while he strug­gled with it.  I really didn’t believe he was dying until he was in hos­pice, because he did such a good job of pre­tend­ing he was going to beat it.  I will always react with sus­pi­cion to claims of recov­ery from can­cer now.  But I believed because I wanted to believe and I had to believe.

Now, in the last six months, I was laid off from a hor­ri­ble job and after a cou­ple of months of ter­ri­fy­ing free­lance scur­ry­ing, I got my best job yet with a new com­pany. I  work from home, I have tremen­dous cre­ative free­dom, and I get to work with cut­ting edge web tech­nolo­gies.   The only down­side is that it’s pretty time con­sum­ing and it leaves me more men­tally drained at the end of the day than I have ever been.

Rather than fight it, I’ve decided to just go with it.  The job is great, but it takes enough from me that I find writ­ing to be far too dif­fi­cult to man­age at this time.  Roundbottom takes up a con­sid­er­able chunk of my free time and I find it mostly very cre­atively ful­fill­ing.   I cer­tainly won’t run that site and project for the rest of my life, but I could get sev­eral years out of it for sure.

I love the idea of writ­ing.  I love writ­ing ideas.  But lately, the strug­gles to keep my life afloat have left me with lit­tle energy to deal with the fight of publishing.

Truth is, I am still pretty emo­tion­ally sen­si­tive.  I was much thicker-​​skinned before all this, but neg­a­tive reviews lit­er­ally send me into stu­pid tears.   Rejections some­times as well.   My one and only Clarkesworld rejec­tion con­firmed my worst fears about my inabil­i­ties and I nearly made the deci­sion there to give up on writ­ing per­ma­nently.    I do not have what it takes to shrug off rejec­tion very well.  Perhaps its because I have deep per­sonal issues iwth the sub­ject of rejec­tion or some­thing.  Either case, I can’t seem to make it not both­er­ing me, so when I’m doing it, it’s a major source of pain for me.

So to recap,  per­sonal issues, strug­gle with time and energy, plus inabil­ity to han­dle rejec­tion (all adding up to what is prob­a­bly a lack of motivation)–these are the rea­sons I have decided to set aside my pur­suit of a side-​​career as a fic­tion writer, at least until I have a bet­ter grip on the basics of a life, a fam­ily, and a job.

I hope those of you who are my writer and edi­tor friends won’t drift away because I’m not writ­ing.  I will be more than happy to read stuff for peo­ple.  I will not be giv­ing up read­ing, and talk­ing about SF.  Just putting any real story words out myself, except for the weekly Roundbottom sched­ule stuff which is not insignificant.

I don’t con­sider this a per­ma­nent retire­ment.  It’s still a pas­sion of mine, and I hope to return to it when I feel like it’s in me, maybe in a cou­ple of years.

Postmortem:“Babe, I Am Going to Leave You”

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Yesterday, I released my intensely per­sonal story of death, Led Zeppelin, and how fam­i­lies cope with death, “Babe, I am Going to Leave You” as a CC-​​licensed story. A friend asked what my think­ing was behind doing this, so I thought I’d break it down in a blog post, in case any­one else was interested.I wrote this story, over the course of about a year, in an attempt to come to terms with my own father’s death from can­cer. I always intended to try and pub­lish it some­where like any other story I wrote, but once I tried doing so, I found I had invested too much of myself to be able to han­dle the rejec­tions. Most rejec­tions are slightly painful, but you can shrug them off. I just couldn’t shrug off rejec­tions to this story.

I strug­gled with whether I should essen­tially “self-​​publish” the story. I don’t have a large read­er­ship here. I’m not John Scalzi or Jay Lake, although I hope to attract as many fol­low­ers some day. Am I the only writer who won­ders about max­i­miz­ing the audi­ence for their sto­ries, or do we all worry about that? I don’t make much money from my sto­ries, so I’ve focused on grow­ing an audi­ence more than the money.

I also wor­ried that some would see releas­ing the story myself as a coward’s way out. I do feel guilty for not try­ing harder to find a place to pub­lish the story that could have given it more read­ers than I could on my own. The story is, in a big way, my way of hon­or­ing my father. Did I do him honor just releas­ing it to the hand­ful of peo­ple who read this? I don’t know. I was tired of hav­ing it here, and hav­ing no one read it though. I really wanted to do good with this story. I had expe­ri­enced some­thing pro­found and painful, and I wanted to help oth­ers get through a sim­i­lar expe­ri­ence. The chance to do some good, even a lit­tle, is what con­vinced me it was the right thing to do.

I want to thank those of you who linked my story in your own blogs. I really appre­ci­ated that. It made me feel much more like I made a good choice here. And those of you who have writ­ten me, thank­ing me for post­ing the story. I am glad that it has helped you.

In the future, I will def­i­nitely con­tinue to release reprints of my sto­ries online under the Creative Commons. It can only help a writer at my stage of career. I don’t think I will release any other unpub­lished sto­ries though, because I think it’s too easy and attrac­tive to cir­cum­vent the rejection/​acceptance process.

For exam­ple, I have this story about a plague that turns famous peo­ple into plas­tic stat­ues and about the peo­ple who col­lect the for­merly famous like base­ball cards. It’s got a very polit­i­cal slant, and never found a home prob­a­bly because of that, or maybe because it’s not as funny as I think it is. There’s a strong temp­ta­tion to just pub­lish it on the web, espe­cially because it’s par­tially about Bush and he’s about to leave the White House (I hope) and the story will lose its rel­e­vancy at that point. I don’t know. Maybe I can find a pub­lisher for it int he next 9 months. Or I can sell it as alt-​​history futur­ism later.

Still, regard­less, I am glad I released this one story this way. Thank you for read­ing it.

A CC-​​Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

A CC-​​Licensed Story: “Babe, I’m Going to Leave You”

I slept very badly last night, and had a migraine to end all migraines. I’m slowly recov­er­ing this morn­ing. I recently woke up and, along with this lin­ger­ing headache, I found I have an over­whelm­ing desire to give some­thing away.

I’ve posted a story online under a Creative Commons license. It’s about death, Led Zeppelin, and how fam­i­lies cope. A lot of it really hap­pened. Some of it did not. It’s so intensely per­sonal that I can’t bear to receive another rejec­tion call­ing it “slight” or any­thing else, so here it is, posted for any­one to read and call “slight” or any­thing else they want to call it. What is impor­tant to me is that maybe some­one reads it who is going through some­thing sim­i­lar and feels a lit­tle less alone. Writing it sure helped me. But your milage may vary.

With that said, here’s the link to the story. Share it as you see fit.

Babe, I’m Going to Leave You

Whale Fall

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

When a whale dies, an entire ecosys­tem blos­soms in its corpse. Species of clams, worms, and other inver­te­brates can be found on the bones of a dead whale that can­not be found any­where else. The “seeds” of these ecosys­tems seem to lay dor­mant in the ben­thos of the deep oceans, wait­ing for that one-​​in-​​a-​​million chance that a whale, it’s last breath escap­ing for the sur­face, will fall to the muck and mud. Imagine being stranded in the desert, your only hope for flour­ish­ing in the form of a giant falling from the sky. Tons and tons of meat and bone, pro­vid­ing nour­ish­ment and suc­cor. Later, sulfur-​​loving bac­te­ria pick over the bones and release hydro­gen sul­fide, launch­ing an entirely new ecosys­tem of chemosyn­thetic bac­te­ria. And it’s here where the diver­sity really gets wild, with nearly 200 dif­fer­ent species mak­ing up the com­mu­nity, feed­ing on the bac­te­ria, feed­ing on the feed­ers of the bacteria.

Swim in the sky
Creative Commons License photo credit: t2s

I see no beauty in death. I am ter­ri­fied of it, as a gen­eral rule. The loss of a human mind to the black maw of noth­ing is the only thing that fright­ens me, really. My panic attacks, at their root, are all about my fear of death. But, for some rea­son, I read about whale falls, and I am filled with awe and amaze­ment. There is beauty there, for me, and I don’t know why. A great, amaz­ing crea­ture dies, and gives life to not just one, but sev­eral ecosys­tems, for years and years after its death.

I want my death, when it comes, if it comes (as I hope to catch the wave of life exten­sion sci­ence and live for centuries–a fool­ish hope, but I can­not relin­quish it), to be as beau­ti­ful and as gen­er­a­tive as a whale fall. I want what I have done in my life to cre­ate as much, per­haps. And the fear of death that I have–maybe it’s because I know I haven’t done that yet. Now would be too soon. I’m not ready. That’s what the attacks are about. Not being ready.

I refuse to come to terms with the idea of my own mor­tal­ity. Not yet. Not until I can die like the whales do.

When my Dad killed The Family Dog

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

My dad died two years ago. It’s been hard to get over. We had a year from his can­cer diag­no­sis until he passed away, and I never wanted to admit what was hap­pen­ing and I’m only just admit­ting it now. I didn’t want to see him on his death bed in the end, because I knew that if I didn’t see it, part of me could deny it had ever hap­pened. He was 44 years old. In case you’re won­der­ing, I am 29. My par­ents were young when I was born, and I’ve always banked on that to avoid those tragedies that we all face some day. Life is strange that way. All of my friends with par­ents in their 50s and 60s still have theirs, and I’m down one already.

You focus on the happy mem­o­ries at first, but some­times, there are less pleas­ant mem­o­ries that repeat­edly rise up like angry ghosts, demand­ing to be accounted for. They spring on you in the mid­dle of the night, take grip on your mind, and refuse to let go. Lately, I can’t stop think­ing about how my father killed his dog when I was eight.

My par­ents had recently divorced. To this day, I’m not sure what the cir­cum­stances were. As part of attempt­ing to make it up to myself, my sis­ter, and my lit­tle brother, our par­ents each got a puppy. That dog that lived with my mother was Beauty. I can­not remem­ber the name of the dog that lived with my father.

The two were sis­ters, mutts, small­ish dogs, but not pun­ters like poo­dles or chi­huahuas. They were lov­ing, but hard to train. And my father’s dog liked to chew things.

I did not see him kill the dog. I am not sure how I know what hap­pened, but I can pic­ture it like I was there. My father was liv­ing in the base­ment of his old­est sister’s house on the east side of Topeka. During the day, he worked as a meter man. He wore a blue uni­form that was often mis­taken for a policeman’s uni­form with black shoes that he kept well-​​polished. I think he had a spe­cial affec­tion for shoes then, given that he walked miles and miles every day as part of his beat. This was before the scoot­ers meter peo­ple use now.

He came home from some­where, I imag­ine it was to buy what few gro­ceries he could afford after giv­ing most of his money to my mother to feed us, and his dog, the one whose name I can­not remem­ber, had chewed one of his work shoes to pieces and was start­ing in on the other. It was then, in a fit of anger, that he threw the remain­ing shoe at his cow­er­ing dog, strik­ing her in the head. She whim­pered, fell onto her side, and died.

I know this story. Someone told it to me, but it was not my father. He never spoke of it. I saw tears in my father’s eyes sev­eral times over my life– he was not the kind of touchy-​​feely mod­ern man that some fathers are, but he was not so stoic either. But I can remem­ber ask­ing my father about his dog, and see­ing him shake his head and turn away to keep me from see­ing his tears.

My mother gave Beauty to my father. Despite all the trou­ble they had, despite the fact that he had killed his own dog a week before, she gave him the dog. If he were alive, he would prob­a­bly tell me that the rea­son was that my mother couldn’t han­dle the dog, that Beauty was con­stantly mak­ing messes and she gave him the dog in frus­tra­tion. I’m not so sure about that.

A year later, she was remar­ried, and we moved in with my father. Beauty became the fam­ily dog, and at some point, I for­got the other dog. We gave Beauty away to my mother’s sis­ter when my father remar­ried and we moved from Topeka to Lawrence. She’s long dead now. She was a good dog. Gentle and for­giv­ing of children.

I wish I could remem­ber the dog’s name. I think that some small part of me should honor her like I honor my father. He wasn’t per­fect, but I know he never meant to hurt his dog.