Notes of a Dirty Old Dan: Dusty Memories That Need To Be Buri

Some journal entry I found a few days ago.

When my Grandfather died...he wasn't in any pain. That was one thing my Dad asked the doctor to insure..."Make sure He doesn't suffer, promise me that..." My Grandfather eventually succumbed to whatever was wrong with him and he was buried up in Michigan. I wasn't there and I wasn't told about it. I just heard that he died. I didn't really know him that well, he was a quiet stoic person the few times I was around him. He didn't talk much to me just handed my Dad a check that he called our "Christmas" money. Looking back on it, I wanted to know more about him and hear those stories about his life but I was too young to understand. He cut a striking figure and dressed like an undertaker, black suit, white shirt, black tie, black pressed slacks with polished black shoes that shone reflected like mirrors and a black hat that he always took off when he came into the house. He wasn't that tall but still seemed to own a room when he walked into it and sat down to talk. My Father told me that he would watch three football games at once, running from one room to the other and he could keep track of all them Bobby Fischer style in his head. That's a talent that skipped me, my Brother has that kind of Rain Man thinking talent. I, unfortunately, don't. He still remains a mythical figure to me much like my Uncle Craig then again so does the rest of my relatives. I'm not sure why I am so interested in knowing about them now perhaps because it provides a clue or two that will make a good story that is why I'm trying so desperately to get as many memories as I can from my Dad and my Mother, I suppose it is just the historian in me, I like to document things, events and other occurances  After my Grandfather died, my Dad moved his Mother in with us and she seemed satisfied with watching old movies on the good vcr on the good television that we owned. She would often ask me to watch them with her. In fact, I am sitting in her old room as I type this. I asked her once and only once what it felt like to lose a lover, she said "I don't think about it that much. I stay busy and sometimes, some nights I look through old photo albums and I see how handsome he was and still was, I was impressed with what those make up artists at the funeral home did to my husband, he looked like he was sleeping...my son, your Father, paid for an open casket funeral and made sure he was buried where he belonged. Your Grandfather courted me well, I was young. He showed up at my parents' place and all of my brothers were standing outside and most of them were over six feet and he said his "hellos" then managed to make his way through the gauntlet. I remember him standing there with some flowers and that horseless carriage outside with the motor running. My father was sitting there on his favorite chair with his nose buried in the newspaper and my mother said "Speak to the young man!" and my father pulled down the paper enough to expose his eyes and said "Good evening" then went back to reading the paper. He was alot older than me, I was eighteen and he was in his twenties and he was the only man I had slept with but I don't regret not being with other men because he was so intensly quiet, a little crazy, he was so damn handsome and I fell in love with him when he opened the door for me, much like the way your mother fell in love with your father. I miss him terribly, I miss the way he would lie to me, hide whisky bottles in the barn and go off to see the prizefights on the outskirts of town, drink and scream 'That guy's a bum! Throw 'em out!' There was also the stock car racing on those dirt tracks, I knew where he was going and I knew what he was doing but I allowed him to have his fun just as long as he came home to me." Reich and Roll, Seig Heil, Born To Kill, See Ya At The Gig Comrades...