August 12, 1998

Yesterday was the seventh anniversary of my father's death. A hard day. He died three months after being diagnosed with lung cancer.

My father was the baby of his family. He was one of nine kids. His mother died when he was only five. He lived in Oklahoma and worked hard along with the rest of his family. Picking cotton and playing music at night with his daddy.

They were dirt poor. He and my grandpa would play bars around town at night to help make money. My father was a genius with a guitar or violin. He was three when he played for the governor, which was on the radio as well. He would play the fiddle and fall asleep and his daddy would tap him on the shoulder and he would wake up playing without missing a beat.

Later in life that is what he did for a living. He never made the big time, but he played with plenty that did and he also played on some of their albums. He played bars and nightclubs and back then they didn't close at two. He had been married at nineteen, had a son and divorced not long after. Unfortunately he didn't get to know his little boy very well before the boy and his mother moved back to Colorado. My father remaining in California where most of his siblings had landed as well.

When he was twenty three he met my mother on a blind date. They were married eight weeks later. My mother was born in Iowa but came to California when she was very small. She lived in LA and that is where they met. She was a bank teller at the time, and remained in banking her whole life. Which was fortunate for our family, as my father was not exactly Johnny on the spot with a paycheck.

My father would come in at four in the morning and then we kids had to keep quiet or we would get the belt. We were terrified of our father, but we did love him. He just had a heavy hand when it came to discipline. Lucky, was my my half brother who was ten year older than I, or at least I thought of him as lucky, because he didn't get whippings. We got whipped for various reasons. He would tell us to pick out a belt and wait for him in the bedroom, that's very scary for a kid!

We did have some great times though...Fishing, camping, making ice cream, growing and cooking our own okra, he basically taught me how to cook at the age of eight. He was fun to be around when he played music, which was often. He smoked and he would put his cigarette behind his ear while playing the guitar. We would watch in wonder as the cigarette burned down and the ash got longer and longer. Strange thing to remember.

When I was about nine, my mother made my father get a real job. He was a mechanical genius as well. Only went to eighth grade was more knowledgeable than anybody I knew in building almost anything. He could do anything electrical, use any tool, build a patio, brick barbecue, complete with pulley system to bring the rotating basket up and down. He could lay concrete, he had one hell of a head for fractions which came from tools and sizes of nuts and bolts, I believe. After we got married and while we were away, he put in additional outlets in our bathroom. Put more outlets in the garage and added many fluorescent lights. He fixed our yard lights. He simply did it all. So, getting a job as a mechanic was what he did.

He worked odd hours, but brought home a steady paycheck for the first time in our lives. It relieved much pressure on my mother, who had three kids and worked her ass off climbing the ladder in an industry of mainly men. Banking has changed a lot since then. My father brought home an electric cart that they were getting rid of at his company. Fixed it up and we used to drive it around the street and park behind our street. He once welded two bikes together to make a tandem and we loved that bike.

Finally, his company had a layoff and closed his building. He was out of work after about twenty years. He started building guitars, but never sold them, always gave them away. He did the locksmith course off a book of matches! Seriously, took classes via mail and passed, got his license and opened up as a locksmith. He did that for a while, he was good at it, but didn't go to calls in bad areas. Which limited his clientele!

My parents bought their house in 1970 for $34,000. They sold it in about 1994 for more than $250,000. The moved up to Bakersfield, about three hours north of here. My mother had retired from the bank and it was becoming obvious that she had Alzheimer's. We knew she had it before the official diagnosis though. He was there for her. Not always liking it, but she spoiled him rotten and let him get by with everything their whole married lives, it was now his turn to take care of her. And we thought he would always be around to do that.

As it happens, it didn't turn out that way. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1998 and died August 12, three months later. Also, one week after my parents forty-fifth weddng anniversary. We had him back down here near us and we moved my mother around between our homes. They had sold their home in Bakersfield when my father was diagnosed. He wanted to go back to Oklahoma. When it became apparent, he would need my brothers and my help, we forced him to come back, only to get off the plane and go straight to the hospital. From there he went straight to a nursing home. It was a very dark time. We took my mother to see him daily. My out of work for a year brother got a job! That left only me to care for my mother who had grown so much worse with the Alzheimer's. And I had a husband and a five and six year old at home as well.

So, my father was gone and we had to deal with my mother, and their affairs. I got my mother into a assisted living apartment not to far from me and as she got worse she needed more help. One day I took her shopping for clothes and she was out of breath. I took her back to the doctor who had given her a physical the week before. Chest ex-ray showed cancer had spread into her lungs. We never found out from where. She died two weeks later and it was almost six months to the day after my father died. They were together again.

The only good thing that came from my father's death, was that we got back in touch with my half brother I had not seen since I was six. He is fully in our lives now and a very important and loved member of our family.