Thanksgiving

This is an odd holiday for my family. We have the requisite death by fooding, the snoring through football and all the family getting together that everyone else has, but at some point in the day, there's a pause. It's not something official, and it's not something together, but at some point throughout the day you can see it cross everybody's face. It's memory, and that seems to be where the focus of this blog is going, so let's cruise a little further on up the road, as the song says.

1994, Saturday. Two days after Thanksgiving. Suzy and I have been together for a couple of months now and I'm spending pretty much every weekend at her place now, so that's where I'm found. It's late-ish, maybe 11. Far enough into the evening that when my pager goes off, it's a little unusual. When the phone rings downstairs, we ignore it, because it's Saturday night and we're doing what young couples do on Saturday nights when their relationship is new. Think back, you'll remember.

When the cell phone rings and the pager goes off again, I'm perplexed enough to answer my cell. It's John Fore, one of my roommates from Rock Vegas.

"Yeah, what?" somewhat annoyed.

"Dude. Call your Dad. He's trying to find you."

"What's up?" becoming concerned, because my Dad never calls. Anyone.

"I dunno, he just told me to have you call home."

Hang up, scared now. I look at my pager, it's my parent's number. Seriously concerned now, I go downstairs to hear my dad leaving a message on the machine

"...call me as soon as you get this, it's important."

I pick up, dial him back.

"Hey. What's wrong?" In my parent's world, nobody ever calls anyone after 9PM unless something is terribly wrong.

There's a pause, and I know it's bad.

"Wayne was killed in a car wreck a little while ago."

"No."

Beat.

"What happened?"

"We don't know yet."

"Should I come home?"

"No. There's nothing you can do tonight. Come home tomorrow morning, we'll know more then."

Beat.

"I need to go, I still have to call Bobby."

"Alright. I'll see you tomorrow."

And as I curl up into a ball, naked under the bar in my condo's kitchen, cold linoleum slowly imprinting flower patterns onto my legs and side, I realize that my brother is gone. Just like that, with a phone call, shit has become seriously fucked up.

Wayne Alexander was my brother-in-law. He married my sister Bonnie when I was a year old. I am the youngest of four children, current ages 52, 49, 48 and 32. So there's a little bit of a disconnect there. Until I got out of college, my siblings had always been more like other sets of parents or aunts and uncles than brothers and sisters. And I was always closest to Bonnie and Wayne.

Bonnie wanted to have kids in the absolute worst way, and it was a long time in coming for her, so she took me in as my 2nd mom almost from the time I was out of Mama's arms. I spent as much of my waking time at her house as I did my own when I was small, and their friends Guinea, Herb, Cranford and Lana and Joe were my extended family too. When Jessica and Stephanie were born, I was old enough to have distanced myself a little from that, but Bonnie is still the sibling I am closest to, by far.

I had my first beer at their kitchen table. We won't discuss the fact that I was 11. I shot my first gun in their front yard. I looked at my first porn in their closet (glad for a moment that my sister is internet-illiterate, I don't think she knows that I swiped a pile of Wayne's Playboys when I was in Jr. High). These are major events for a southern boy. Bonnie gave me my first Clapton album, and has been subsequently responsible for many of my favorite musical experiences of my life.

So to have Wayne ripped away from us that quickly was absolutely fucking devastating. I have never experienced anything quite so suddenly shattering, not even when my fiance dumped me from across the Atlantic Ocean (another story for another time, but I'll get there, I promise).

My father is an incredibly softhearted man. You'd never know it to look at him, a slightly gnarled sunburnt stump of a man with woodcutter arms and a plodding half-stomp of a gait, but he taught me that it's okay for a man to cry. We watched MASH together and wept like little girls when Henry Blake's chopper got shot down. So it wasn't a huge surprise to see him weeping outside my sister's house when I walked onto her porch. But I had never seen my brother Bob cry before, not even when his son Jash died the day after he was born. But Bobby was crying too that day, and it broke my shit right up. I remember only snapshots from those next few days -

My sister sitting on the couch looking for all the world like someone in advanced Alzheimer's, just uncomprehending. The epitomy of the word "haunted eyes."

Walking down the hallway that Monday in the theatre building at school and finding Marc, the chair of our department to tell him that I wouldn't be in classes for a few days, could he make that all work out for me, and this 6' 3" bear of a guy just folding me into a hug that for a second at least, held my pain at bay and let me feel safe.

The amazing amount of food spread through every room of Bonnie's double-wide. Southerners understand that not only is the way to win a heart through the stomach, but often the way to heal one begins there as well. The people of that small community made sure that my whole family's physical comforts were taken care of for those days while we tried to begin to patch our hearts together.

Standing outside the funeral home waiting for the private visitation before the greeting line, and waiting for Bonnie to arrive. My niece Diane, Bobby and I were standing out back waiting for her when Bobby said "Well, we always said she'd be late for her own funeral. I guess this is as close as you can really get." My mother slapped his arm, and I laughed for the first time in three days.

I don't remember much of the funeral. Nothing of what was said. Those aren't the things that stand out at those moments. I remember Danny Wallace's ponytail. I remember the sadness in Robert Blair's eyes. I remember people hugging me that I hadn't seen in years. I remember Mike Wallace and I talking for the first time in 5 years.

So this is a holiday for giving thanks. Really. Take a minute and look around the table, and be fucking thankful, because it can all change too fast. I still remember the conversations we had that Thanksgiving, because we were all talking about how much Wayne's mullet looked like Toby Keith's mullet, and how that boy was never gonna have a hit if he didn't fix that hair.

I'm thankful for all that I have. I'm also thankful for the experiences of loss that I've had, because that makes me appreciate what I still have. I'm thankful for the three people who read this blog, and especially for the reconnection it has allowed me to make with old friends. And for the new friends I've made this year. Friends are important. It's like somebody said, "Friends are the family that we choose." Thanks for being part of my family.