Poor Charlie
Tearing down the walls of eternity
All in my loving memory
Haken - "In Memorium" - The Mountain - 2013
Being disregarded is a shame. So is being smothered. At the hands of Mom, Dad somehow suffered both while deserving neither, a dreadful fate, indeed.
Thursday
“HUHuuuughhhhhh......ughhhhhhh.......ARGHHH......HUUUUUUhhhhhhhh!”
Dad's mighty biceps heaved as he dug deeper and deeper, sweat pouring from his face in the 1978 Texas autumn heat. He sounded like a bear caught in a trap. The ash on the cigarette wedged between his lips was impossibly long, showing off his remarkable ability to smoke a whole one without touching it, one drag for every breath.
Smoke breaks are for slackers - he smoked while working. It was like watching a nicotine-fueled robot work. The man was a machine; a resounding badass.
He was feverishly finishing an underground plumbing repair for Mutchie, his uber-kook of a mother-in-law, before he and I left on a rare, brief, harried foray to his home state Arkansas for a family function.
I, age 10, tagged along to help, prized Handy Dan shovel in hand, but was of little use. See, that clay Texas dirt is hard. Damn hard. There was room for just one in the hole. So, I did nurse duty, handing him tools and keeping him hydrated and laughing until work was done, long after dinnertime and sunset. That “cleared” us to flee to Arkansas for one night (later expanded to two, further angering Mom).
For the record, I don't recall Mom once ever taking the initiative to bring Dad a cold drink during the innumerable hours he was working hard outside.
The job was a real bitch, pipe buried deeper under the old house and the problem harder to find than he expected. Perodically, Mutchie came to have a look, uttering her trademark "Wooooooo!" howl and loudly rejoicing in how wonderful Dad was.
Poor Charlie.
Friday
"Awww, honey. Awww, love. Awww, angel."
Dad's pathetic groveling spilled from the Texarkana pay phone. Hampered by the sheer impracticality of coming right out and forbidding Dad from seeing his family, Mom had to fall back on lambasting him for years-old chicken shit. Dad, bleeding pure fealty, would respond to each attack with one of the above three feeble responses, generally in the order written. It was agony to watch.
I'd suggested, to no avail, that he need not pull over and call home so soon, just over a couple hours into our drive. He feared we'd make it to Grandma's too late to call home, though, so he took the plunge and got the exact results I expected - I saw the icy sendoff he'd gotten a short time before.
The call was a last straw moment for me - something clicked...or snapped...or melted...or solidified...or something. Some sketchy-lookin' teens were waiting to use the pay phone, laughing at Dad's groveling. It was awful. I don't think he noticed them. I hope not.
No. Just...no. Fuck no. That's it. At that exact moment, I declared no confidence in my household government. Dad was too weak and Mom too corrupt to hold legitimate authority in my eyes. Just, no.
That set in motion quite an adventure of rebellion, yet I remained an excellent student and did well in things not directly involving my home life.
Poor Charlie.
Glow. SNORT. Cloud. Glow. SNORT. Cloud. Glow. SNORT. Cloud.
The drive after the phone call was glum and subdued. Dad tended to breathe heavily when upset and, as we know, he could smoke a whole cigarette without touching it much. He'd take a big drag, brightly glowing cherry illuminating his anguished face, then snort it out thru the nose in a big cloud.
The rest of the drive sucked. Thank goodness for the radio. We had a pleasant time in Arkansas, but Dad was still distracted, nervous, and fidgety. What a shame.
After we returned, Mom gave Dad the cold shoulder for weeks simply because he left for under 70 hours to see his family. He kept presenting himself to her; she kept pushing him away.
Poor Charlie.
Spanksgiving and Far Beyond
The next year, he dared to go to Arkansas for one night on Thanksgiving and there was hell to pay. Grandpa Theo died after a long, fetid stint in a nursing home while he was gone and I had been hit by a car a week before, suffering an epic thigh bruise and broken foot.
Mom raked him over the coals something awful on that one, even though neither of those matters suffered from Dad's brief absence. It's not like he was the one who was gonna embalm Theo and I got around fine on my crutches - hell, I made us breakfast that morning!
The cold shoulder from Mom lasted through Xmas, an especially brutal experience for him. At our holiday gathering, Mom acted as if all was fine, filling Dad with hope that the cruel nightmare was over. After everyone left, he came to embrace her and wish her Merry Xmas and she pushed him away as I watched from the sofa.
I'll never, ever forget the look of shock and woe on his face as we locked eyes in the middle of that travesty. It might be the worst one second of my childhood.
Only the 3 of us had any idea this was happening, reminiscent of the hidden dysfunction in Mom's "secret" divorce from Aydin in the prior decade. Assuring that image does not match reality is a cornerstone of The Flozberk Way.
He did not return to Arkansas until his dear mother, who, sadly, I barely knew, died on the day before Halloween almost 5 years later. Mom, in her infinite mercy, let him slide on that one. After that, I don't recall him going there at all for over 30 years until after Mom died, but that seems impossible. I sure hope so, for he really loved his family.
Poor Charlie
Barren. Lonely. Golden.
Dad's marriage to Mom was among the stark minority to last 50 years and go gold. Unfortunately, it was heavily devoid of the very things that men dream of when they buy that silly ring. Dad was in many ways a thoroughbred, but he was largely treated as a mangy pack jackass, a beast of burden, by The Flozberk Foreigner Freaks.
They were married in 1965, but Mom got sick in 1978, refused to stop smoking, and it was all downhill from there. And, even before then, it had to have sucked for him, saddled with that gaggle of kooks from day one.
He was exploited as a jewelry smuggling mule right off the block, Mutchie was conning him essentially immediately, the sleazy lowlife Aydin was wedged into his life, and he worked harder than any man I've known.
Dad loved exotic flavors, but Mom was a bland chef who never tried to expand her tiny horizons (and actually boasted about that)- before giving up housewife stuff altogether. He liked and respected women and dug having fun, but Mom shut down all that wife stuff, from all forms of physical intimacy to simply doing things together other than watching TV, tragically early in the game.
Mom always used her health as an excuse, but lemmetellya, both members of my household are disabled. We've met many other gimps in handicapped seating at events, etc., hobbled by a chilling range of woes. Here's the bottom line - if you care enough about your loved ones, you make the right things happen. If you don't, then you don't. It's quite simple.
Poor Charlie.
Yes, Madam
After Dad retired in 1995, the full swallowing of his life by Mom came to fruition. Mom's world had to be Dad's world, and Mom's world was all too often strange and bleak. It reminded me of the iconic old flick Sunset Boulevard, a tale of a decidedly kooky washed-up silent film star holed up in her big house and her fiercely devoted butler, Max. In fact, watching it the first time chilled me to the bone. Mom and Dad were a modified version of Norma and Max.
Ironically, Mom and I laughed our asses off at the Carol Burnett Show spoofs of it from the late 1970s. I'm glad I didn't see the movie until after Mom was gone, for had I dared to compare her to Norma Desmond in any way, she would have up an' lost it on me as seen when I likened her to meddlesome soap opera character Pheobe Wallingford or the legendary Shakespearean moneygrubber Shylock.
Dad and I didn't spend very much time together until the last years of his life, after Mom died, when we became real friends. When I was a child, he worked very hard and gave almost all his leisure time to Mom, watching TV with her at increasingly-blistering volume. I hung out with him in the garage a lot and helped him build control panels for his bidness.
Dad and I went to a Cowboys game once. We went to Six Flags once. We went out in the first little boat he got once. We left the city limits to buy and discharge fireworks once. We went to Arkansas...twice! Hooray for the double dip! Mom made him pay for that sauciness, though.
Mom loved animals, but we never went to the zoo. She loved culture, but we went to one play, zero symphonies, and zero museums in Dallas. Our hick American versions weren't good enough for her to bother with, yet Judge Judy and General Hospital were worth her daily attention.
Poor Charlie.
Fair Thee Well, Not
One thing Dad and I engaged a bit more than just once was the State Fair of Texas. Dad loved it and each year we got a free ticket and a day off from school. Neither of us liked the scary rides - I suspect we'd endured enough unpleasantness that paying to be synthetically terrorized didn't suit us. The games, exhibits, and treats sat nicely with us, though.
Then, I aged, preferring to attend with my stoner friends and soon lost interest, finding it obnoxious, crowded, noisy, stinky, thuggy, and a throbbing ripoff. Later, caught up in adult life, I declined Dad's yearly invitations to go with him, a terrible mistake let slip by a selfish, stupid son upon a lonely, gentle patriarch.
I sure wish I could have those at-bats back. Dad had earned more much-needed companionship than I saw fit at the time to offer. I should have been happy to walk in circles in a janitor closet with him if that's what he wanted to do. What I thought of the fucking State Fair of Texas was of zero significance, yet that decided the matter. Idiot. Oh, how I wish I could have those opportunities back.
At the time, though, I was much more in tune with The Istanbul Bunch's toxic and self-centered ways than those of the much more fair and functional Arkansas Bunch.
He deserved better. And, damn it, we would have had a good time. I'm unable to think about the State Fair of Texas without becoming pensive and regretful, thinking about that wonderful, hard-working family man strolling the fairgrounds alone. For me, the fairgrounds, which I drive by often, are a monument to Dad's marginalization by the whole family, me included.
Finally
Later in the 90's, I had a nice boat and we finally got out in the world to repeatedly enjoy one another's company outside of the limited ways dictated by Mom. Nobody was a guest on my boat even half as much as Dad and we had one great time after another traveling, fishing, floating while doing nothing but enjoying the scenery, and eating Tex-Mex and BBQ that Mom banned from our family life.
Dad delighted in visiting new lakes and exploring their nooks and crannies with me. Ray Hubbard. Fork. Tawakoni. Arlington. Texoma. Joe Pool. Even if we got skunked, we still had a blast.
After Mom died in 2015, we truly became close friends and moderation-guided drinkin' buddies. He finally wrapped his mind around the simple fact that I was a sensible middle-aged man and no longer the tormented, scattered youngster that cast a much longer shadow than reality should have allowed.
And, on the last full day of his aware life, he made things right, going out with a blast of resolve and action, not a whimper of impotence. No occurrence in my life has made me more deeply and lastingly happy.
Dad's life was woefully deprived of enrichment and choked with tribulation. As time wore on, various entities slashed and stabbed at his manhood, his kin, his sense of self, his autonomy and later his hands and feet, his taste buds, his faculties, his identity, his dignity, and eventually even his son and control over his entire existence.
Poor Charlie. He fucking deserved better.
Demise
I'm cool with how Dad's life itself came to a close. The circumstances were downright insane and the end of his life was trashed in layers by The God Damn Flozberks, but the way the very end unfolded was, well, quite good for all.
It was about that time and he himself was about fed up. Worse, he was bored.
While caring for Dad, it was never our goal to help Dad live as long as possible - that thought didn't even occur to us. The mission was to keep him up and moving as long as possible. He dreaded being blind, numb, and bedridden, but was headed that way.
That said, at the end, we were devising plans to move in with him, get caregiver aid that was bilingual to keep more of his brain firing, get him better medical care, and devote our lives to making sure he was as content and stimulated as life allowed. Still, we couldn't bring back his eyesight, or his beloved wife, or his hands and feet, or keep the Grim Doggie Reaper from crumbling Tasha forever.
So yeah, it was about that time. While there are more peaceful ways to go out, he didn't suffer terribly much or long, quite unlike far too much of his life up to that point. Like his own father, Dad finished life briskly, on his feet.
I'm relieved he didn't have to experience Tasha's death. I'm relieved he didn't have to live through COVID. Had the nasty-ass, peabrained, sloppy Flozberks been involved with Dad then, I can only assume he would have been the first person in Texas to die from it. I'm relieved he didn't live to see how polarized and coarse his nation became. I'm relieved he no longer was in the middle of a conflict between his son and stepdaughter that was looking increasingly unresolvable.
And, I'm relieved Neila and Reagan got a break from years of elder care. Did they suck? Absolutely. Are they shady-ass walking nightmares? Oh, yeah. But still, they did a lot and suffered plenty. I very much care for them and they needed time to rest, recover, spend time with their granddaughter, be tormented by their lunatic druggie son, and sue the lender who dared to object to them essentially squatting in an expensive house for years.
Leg-acy
Dad was a great man. Intelligent, reliable, true, open, earnest, selfless, capable, hard-working, frugal, sensible, humble, and patient. In other words, largely the antithesis of a damn Flozberk. It's just plain glorious that, in his last significant act on this Earth, that he, with the stroke of a pen, told the Flozzies to cram it where the moon don't shine.
When he finally took the helm of his own ship, he saved Lisa's leg, and in turn our asses from oblivion after we were again and again cast aside and away by the warped, corrupt kooks of The Istanbul Bunch. I lack the words and skill to describe how much we honor and treasure Dad's memory and how grateful we are for the fruits of his half-century-plus of efforts.
If need be, I will fight for him and his wishes until my last breath, and beyond.