4:39am November 13, 2014

Forever is a long time.

They call me at 3 am
To tell me to take my butt pill
(A suppository, for nausea,
Essential for gastroparesis)

I turn on Kathy Mattea’s
“Gone, Gonna Rise Again”
And put it on perpetual repeat

I pace around the house
Getting meds
Emptying my drainage bag
Using the toilet
The music follows me everywhere
Gone, gonna rise again

I go to my closet
The hangers he picked out with my mom
Arrived today
All my best clothes
Including all my dad shirts
Are in that closet
I put on a dad shirt
Now I smell like you
I smell too much like you
It’s almost too much
It’s certainly too warm
I’m still wearing it

I pace back and forth
Benadryl
Tylenol
Lorazepam
Phenergan
Insert three into feeding tube
Insert one into butt
Plug feeding bag back into feeding tube

Kneel on the floor
Arrange rocks in all the right patterns
I feel you everywhere
But especially in the spectrolite

Spectrolite looks like a plain brown stone
But when it hits the light just right
There are rainbow colors
That was you
And most people
Never got to see the rainbow colors
I pick up the spectrolite and hold it in my hand
Then a tiger’s eye ball
And a ball of lapis lazuli
And an egg of schorl
I hold them in my hand
They are the right combination
For this
Whatever this is
However I know they’re the right combination

It’s instinct
I speak rock
You spoke rock too
You were going to send me granite
Real California granite
Not the weird pink kind they have out here

All these things happen fast, one after the other
So fast I barely know they’re happening

I go to my shrine and pray to the gods
For your safe passage
I shake rattles
For safety and protection

I vow to make an ancestor shrine soon
With you as the first member
My great-grandmother second
I even have some idea where I’ll put it
It will be small
But respectful

It will be in my room
So I can give you offerings
Whenever I need to
And because it’s more private
Than my shrine to the gods in general

I smell like you in your shirt
I smell too much like you in your shirt

I’m so tired

I will never
I will never
I will never
I will never
I will never
I will never
I will never

I will never again talk with you
I will never again see your face
I will never again sit in your lap
i will never again get advice from you
I will never again get yelled at by you
i will never again hear one of your ridiculous jokes
I will never again hear you repeat your dad’s weird sayings
I will never again hear the old family stories
I will never again smell alcohol in your breath, your sweat
I will never again hear you holler my middle name, and wonder what I did wrong

Maybe most of all
I will never again hear your voice
Your California-Okie-Arike-accented voice
A voice I can only find now by listening to musicians
As diverse as Merle Haggard and Tony Carey
(Never thought
You’d hear those two
Share a sentence,
Did you?)

Did you know I seek out Okie-Californian musicians
Not for their musicianship
But because their voices are like yours
And there’s only one place in the world
That produces voices like that
Most of the authentic Bakersfield Sound country
Was done by people who sound like you
So I listen to Merle Haggard
Tony Carey’s family were dust bowl migrants too
He does modern electronic music
But when asked “Will you ever do a country album?”
He replied, “It’s all country.”
It all had country’s storytelling spirit
Even if it sounded nothing like country
And you can hear subtle Okie tendencies
In the way he says words like “will” and “kill”
I used to listen to him
Just to hear
Someone who pronounced those words
Like my father

I embrace my Okie and Arkie roots
Because I am embracing you
And you’re the person those roots come from

I used to be afraid to embrace those roots
Every time I thought back to Oklahoma
All I could feel was
Dry
Parched
Dust
Bare
Brown-grey
And I didn’t want to be associated with that
This was before anyone told me about the Dust Bowl
Or that our family just barely escaped
Before it started in earnest

We left for economic reasons
And because we lost two babies
To pesticides against the boll weevil
Because their mother couldn’t watch them
In the house
She had to take them cotton-picking
And they played with the cotton plants
And the anti-boll-weevil powder
Fell into their hands, faces, and mouths
They died shortly thereafter

You taught me that
I had no idea
That I had a great-aunt
And a great-uncle
Who died in infancy
Because of choices
No parent should have to make:
If the boll weevils destroyed the cotton
The whole family could starve to death
So they moved to California
Unable to bear living
Where two of their children had died

I learned this from you
In a book you were writing
As you were dying
I never found out
If you finished your book

I also learned
My ancestors were racist
When you wrote about
My great-grandma having a baby
And your father complaining
“But I wanted a little [n-word] baby!”
And everyone laughing
Family is complex
White, Southern families doubly so

But regardless
I am a proud Okie
And I am a proud Okie because of you
Because you made me see beyond the dust
And into the heart
Of the family
Our resilience
Our perseverance
Our love
Even in the midst
Of situations, both in and out of the family
That other people would see as bad

People who don’t come from families like this one
People who don’t come from cultures like this one
Don’t understand

They don’t understand in the same way
Francie’s teacher didn’t understand
When she wrote a fictionalized account of her family
For a school assignment
She tried to show
That even though her dad was a drunk
He loved his family and tried to do right by them
Her teacher told her never to write about
Such ‘sordid’ subject matter again

That passage may as well have been autobiographical
When A Tree Grows In Brooklyn was published
The author was castigated
For her 'sordid’ subject matter
When all she did
Was tell the truth
Of growing up in the Irish tenement neighborhoods
In New York City

Sherman Alexie has faced similar charges
I find his writing full of wit and humor and reality
All bundled together into one
But he has been asked
“When will you stop writing such dark, depressing subject matter?”
His response was to write
The darkest and most depressing book
He could possibly find
About an Indian
Stolen from his mother on the reservation
Adopted to white parents
Who became a serial killer
Of white people
That, he said, was dark and depressing
Not his stories of everyday life
On and off the reservation

People have told me my writing is too negative
Because I write about the realities of disability

But I know, I know in my bones
That if I had the knowledge
To write about Okies and Arkies
Someone would tell me
The same exact damn thing
Nobody wants to live about cotton farmers
And cotton pickers
Who lose their children
Because they don’t have the money
To pay someone to watch them
And keep them out of the pesticides

That’s what people would say anyway
Of course people did want to hear about it
But only from outsiders
The Grapes of Wrath
“Migrant Mother”
Other people telling our stories
The public eats that up
Like ice cream on a hot day
They’d rather not hear from us
Writing about ourselves

Which is why I am so happy
That even on his deathbed
My father was writing and writing
Dictating to my mother
When he couldn’t type anymore
I can’t wait to read
Whatever he managed to finish
It was a book of family history
But written like a novel

He was thrilled I was doing NaNoWriMo
We were both writing books together
Is how he saw it
I am now determined to finish
Even if I don’t finish in time
I will finish my book
I will edit it
I will publish it
I will
Because of you

I will be proud to be an Okie
Forever
Because of you

I will remember things for you
I will remember your memories
I will remember everything you ever told me

I will remember the things you didn’t tell me
The things nobody told me
The things you were always shocked
When I brought them up
Because I wasn’t supposed to know

But I’ve said it before
And I’ll say it again
When everyone talks around a topic
Each person avoiding the topic in a different way
From a different angle
Then if you look just right
You can see the outline of that topic
And fill in the details
Combine that with being highly sensing
And I knew lots of things
I wasn’t supposed to know

I will remember it all for you

My cat smells you on my shirt
Curls up on top of us
The way she used to curl up between us
On the couch
She knows something is wrong
Remember when she used to sleep
Curled up next to my head
With my arm around her?
You woke up one night
And she was curled up in your face
In the same position
Which is an honor
She has only ever bestowed
To me, and to you
She loved you too

I miss you already
The words
“I will never again…”
Loom huge in my mind
You said it best
When we discussed death
“Forever is a long time.”