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Monthly Archives: April 2013

Tooting our horn a bit!

25 Apr

Now, I typically don’t really do this kid of thing, and I TRY (and fail)  to keep this blog focused on the father /daughter dynamic, but since  I’ve been on a bit of a down streak lately,   I REALLY needed some good news today.  I got a little ray of sunchine, and I decided to share.

Some of you may know,  (others may not) but I have a startup that I have been working on for the last few years.  It’s a tool to help college students earn money for college.  If I may allow myself a bit of self indulgence here…I think it’s pretty cool.  We’ve been mentioned in some local press, a few blogs, did some radio, and were even mentioned in an article on Techcrunch.

Anyway, we were featured in a really well written article today.  Check out this write up by hitting the link below and let me know what you think about what we’re doing…..OH, and feel free to pass the link to the article along…We need as much attention as possible: 

http://bit.ly/12KKWb8

 
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Posted by on April 25, 2013 in business, education, start ups, technology, Uncategorized

 

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Dumbest……..Headline……….EVER!

23 Apr

mcdonalds-Iced-Tea-SmallOkay, so I know that this blog is supposed to be about parenting, and raising daughters, and being a good Daddy and all, but from time to time, I like to take a brief  side road and talk about other stuff. (Plus, my attention span is shorter than the average tsetse fly’s so I need to come up for air every so often.

Now, when I do go off the beaten path, sometimes the stories I tell might be a bit unbelievable.  You know, stories like going into a country  nightclub (a.k.a. BARN)  and getting into an altercation with someone and ending the night with my friend waving what looked like an old CIVIL WAR era 22 rifle around like that was going to scare somebody. ( http://wp.me/p343ND-2l ), ( http://wp.me/p343ND-2C ), ( http://wp.me/p343ND-3r )   Or stories  like what happens to the human body when one consumes too much fiber in a short period ( http://wp.me/p343ND-4h ).  Sometimes, I tell stories about  how I had the world’s WORST JOB EVER ( http://wp.me/p343ND-59   You’ll never believe it unless you read it…Heck I don’t WANT to believe it myself.  Just know that there was gravy, ice, turkeys, feces, a concussion, and feet  involved…..yeah, seriously. )

So, suffice it to say, I have a few  ummmm “interesting” stories to tell, and like I always say, I try to keep it real, so every story I tell is true.  I mean REALLY…who would make up stuff like THIS?!?!? :

So, during my time in the Air Force, there was a period  when I was  temporarily stationed in San Angelo Texas.    My home was still in Clovis, New Mexico, so on some weekends, I would drive back home to spend the weekend with Sharon.    This was before we adopted  the girls.

On one occasion, I was just starting my drive back to San Angelo, when I stopped at a McDonald’s at some small town to grab a bite to eat. ( I THINK it was Muleshoe, Texas).  Anyway, I went through the drive through (which I have since developed a phobia about, btw…DON’T JUDGE ME!), got my burger, fries, apple pie and large tea, and was on the road again.

So, I drove on for a while.  Now, I’m not sure if you know about some of the rural Texas landscape or not, but when you drive across Texas, there’s a distinct possibility that you will be confronted by EXTRAORDINARILY  L-O-N-G stretches of nothing but road…like….ALIEN ABDUCTION type roads.  Like…..TUMBLEWEEDS ARE REAL type roads.  And in the year 1993 PGP (that’s Pre GPS) you could even be lost and not know that you’re  lost for HOURS!  No joke.  And you better PRAY that you don’t break down.

Anyway, so here I am, driving across Texas,  in the middle of GetNowhere and Fast.  I take a slurp at the straw in my tea, and it makes the dreaded “ain’t no more in here, ya big dummy” sound.  So, I decide to pull the lid off and drink the last little bit of liquid straight from the bottom of the cup….and that, dear friend, is when it happened.

I lift the up, proceed to drink, and a big old piece of ice proceeds to get wedged in my windpipe.  (SO NOW I SWERVE.)  Now, I never claim to that I think the same way a NORMAL person would, because my FIRST thoughts were, “Dang…..I’m going to freaking suffocate because a piece of ice got wedged in my windpipe. This is going to be the DUMBEST crime scene, EVER…’cause when it melts, there won’t be any evidence.  Can you imagine the crime scene investigator or the coroner saying ” Who the heck suffocates……on AIR?!?!?  ”

Yeah…that is really what I thought.  The potential of DYING wasn’t scaring me…but the thought of dying AND looking dumber than a box of rocks gave me the willies.

Somewhere in the midst of all of this tomfoolery, I pull the car over to the side of the road. My mind kept racing at 120 mph though.   Now for the sake of not having any of you look at me like I should have on a helmet and straitjacket  when you next see me, I need to present a bit of a note here.  I’m NOT saying that all of these lines of thought are the norm for me, in fact, I’m more likely to say that it was my perceived proximity proximity to my  imminent  DEATH that made me think outside the box.  (Yeah….that works.)

Ok, so the BEST CASE SCENARIO I could hope for at that point was the examining coroner would  determine that I drowned because of the water and tea in my stomach…  (which…in retrospect…wouldn’t have made me look like the sharpest tool in the shed either.)   That thought was almost immediately followed up with “If I can make the internal heat in my body higher, I can melt the ice  faster and well, live!”

Increasing my body temp, huh?  Sounds reasonable.  (NOT) So….how did I think I could do it?  Why, it’s kinda like trying to blow air outta your ear. (OBVIOUSLY…LOL)  You tighten your stomach up as much as you can, and push….simple.  (Try it…you’ll either your face will feel hotter, you’ll pass out, or be left with a BANGING headache ….POSSIBLY, all three.)

So…..here I am, pulled over on the side of the road in the middle of NOWEHERESVILLE, Texas, with a big old piece of McDonald’s ice wedged in my throat,  unable to breath, eyes bulging, trying to increase my body temperature like the monks in the old karate movies so I wouldn’t die and have the headline read “Traveler from New Mexico Chokes on Texas Air”.

Like I said, DUMBEST….. HEADLINE ……..EVER!

(next post we will get back to the normal stuff)

 
3 Comments

Posted by on April 23, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

Stuff like this makes it all worthwhile…..

23 Apr

Sometimes, being a good Daddy can feel like a pretty thankless job, and half the time (well, if you’re like me, WAAAY more than half the time, you don’t even have a CLUE if you’re doing it right.   I spent many a day second guessing what I did or what I said; wanting to make sure that my actions and words always built and never destroyed.  Sometimes I succeeded, more often than not, I failed. I am FAR from the perfect Dad.   But the fact of the matter is, like I tell my girls, “The only way you can GUARANTEE that you’ll lose a fight…is to not fight.”  (Of COURSE< I wasn’t being literal …..ESPECIALLY with as many fights as I lost…Heck, if I would’ve been a professional boxer, they would’ve had to do post fight interviews with  me HORIZONTALLY….wait for it….wait for it….)  . In this case, the only way you can guarantee that you won’t be a good Daddy is to not try.  You HAVE to TRY.  The rewards may not come immediately.  Heck, they may NEVER come…but sometimes….sometimes………you get blessed with things like this:

So I got this text from my oldest daughter, Tee,  yesterday.  It was a screenshot from her Instagram account. .  Anyway,  this is the kind of thing that would make a man that is less in touch with his machismo shed a tear or two when nobody was looking.   ME, on the other hand,  being the tough guy that I am, celebrated by watching some Rambo movies, bare hand  hunting some honey badgers,  and gator rassling…you know, ‘ cause I’m a rough and tumble kinda guy.

(She meant that I was 29 when we adopted them, btw)

Tees Bday Post large

 
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Posted by on April 23, 2013 in children, encouragement, fatherhood, humor, life, parenting

 

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The Wind Whisperer

16 Apr
This post is Fat Ethan approved!

This post is Fat Ethan approved!

By now, you guys know that I have a tendency to go way back just to bring you up to speed with the present.  So if you can just hold on with me for a little bit, I double dog promise to bring you back to what thisblog is all about.  Let’s go back to the summer of 1981.   I was about 10 years old.  I was a borderline barbarian,  so I could only play in the house for so long before I was  banished to the outdoors to continue my exploits.  But that was cool, because I loved to be outside anyway.  Outside, I could rip and run all I wanted.

I loved to imitate the superheroes that I would see on T.V., and that I saw in comic books. In my mind, I had the strength of the Hulk and the speed of the Flash…I could fly like Superman, and fight like Batman. I would run for what felt like hours in the North Carolina sun.  Whenever I got tired, I could lie in the yard and I’d regain super strength from the sun’s  rays like Superman.  And I used the plums that fell from the plum tree in my mama’s yard as “power pellets” for when my super speed started to wane.

I called myself The Agility Ability (Don’t laugh.  I was like ten, and rhyming was cool to me!) and I had an uncanny power to escape any trap. I would leap from ditch bank to ditch bank, dodging the gaping jaws of the piranhas that I KNEW lurked just beneath the murky depths of the ditchwater. I could run and jump and roll like nobody’s business.

My greatest pleasure in all that was much more obscure than one would think, though.   It wasn’t the actual jumping or running or rolling on the ground that gave me the most joy. No, it wasn’t any of those.   It was the sound of the wind as it rushed past me. It was my own private magic. The sound of the wind WHOOOSHING past my ears as I ran made me feel free…freer than anything ever.   When the wind whispered in my ears, I could be anywhere; doing anything.   I was an Olympic runner.  I was a Muhammed Ali training to fight.  I was a race car driver.  My adventures were as big as all outdoors, as grand as any movie and bigger than any comic book.  I wasn’t just another Black kid in the deep woods of North Carolina,  I was more than that.  I was much more.   I can’t even begin to tell you how important that magic was to me…how it helped me to survive the ugliness that the world would inevitably and tirelessly show me.

The wind could be explained away simply enough, sure.   I mean simple Science 101 explains wind and any Health and PE teacher worth his or her salt could explain the mechanics of hearing.   However, the simple, great gift of imagination made it so much more for me.

Then, one day, the wind stopped whispering in my ear.  I can’t really pinpoint exactly when it happened, but it just lost its magic.   It just simply stopped. It became wind and nothing more.  And suddenly, there was one less weapon of defense at my disposal.

Now, let’s fast forward to today.

You ever sit back and think about what it is you thought you would become when you grew up? I do. I look at where I am in life, and where I THOUGHT I would be when I turned this age, and I realize that there are miles between the two extremes. When there was still magic in the wind that swept past my ears, I knew I was destined for something great. I KNEW that I had the spark to accomplish anything that I wanted to….but that was when there was magic and before the wind became….well, wind.

Now that I’m older, I know the culprit that killed off the magic in the wind. I was allowed to stop believing in a lot of things, and I was permitted to settle for what was right in front of me as the end all, be all.  I can’t pinpoint the actual date on which the evildoer actually came and snatched away my ability to dream, but rest assured, he did it.   One day the ditches became just  dirty, stinking, filth filled ditches…no piranhas to bravely vault…just stagnant water with the occasional turtle or crawdaddy.  Suddenly, I was no longer a super hero, sucking power out of plum flavored power pellets, I was just a poor Black kid in the woods of NC, with a plum tree in his yard.   I stopped running, and jumping and flipping towards anything greater than what I saw. I said all of that, to say this:

Fathers, it’s important that you keep your daughters’ imaginations alive.

To this day, there are three questions that I guarantee that my daughters will answer a certain way:

Question one:  How do you call lightning bugs?
Answer: Biddi…Biddi…Biddi.

Question two:  When you were younger, where  did you think that cotton candy came from?
Answer: The dryer

Question three:  But if cotton candy came from the dryer, why wasn’t it sweet?
Answer :  Because it wasn’t processed yet.

Now, I know that they don’t still actually believe these things, but for a few moments in time, they did.  When they did, there was a great, awesome wonder in the belief that they had a magic in their voices that could call lightning bugs.  There was amazement in the “fact” that somehow, the dryer could magically manufacture cotton candy from old tee shirts and jeans (I tried to steer them away from thinking about cotton candy from UNDERWEAR, BTW.   DEEESCUSTING!)   I tried to keep the magic and mystery of the world fresh for them for as long as I could.   I knew what it was like to lose the magic, and I wanted them to savor its sweetness for as long as possible.  So, when we talked, there were little men in traffic lights that changed their color…and the sun was really the size of a quarter.  And everybody knew that helmets weren’t for riding  bikes, but for protecting your head when you jumped on the bed….you know….for when you jumped SOOOO high that you hit the ceiling…..MAGIC!

The wind stopped whispering to me long ago, but I will never forget the importance that it played for me.  Years later, God showed me that the magic never really LEFT me, but that my role within it had changed.   As I grew older, I went from being a wielder of it, to being a guardian of it….a bestower of it.   I was tasked with keeping it alive for my daughters;  to use it to keep  their starry eyed wonder in full bloom until one day, they would become the guardians of the “secrets” of the magic, and pass it on to their kids.

So there you have it…all in just a few pages, the importance of caring for your daughter’s imagination.  If it takes having a tea party with them…do it.  If it means  telling them that they are the best shoe tie-er upper in the entire world…do it. If it means that you have to spend your summer nights running around in the SC  heat with a  mason jar with holes poked in the lid and  filled with leaves screaming   “Biddi…Biddi…Biddi.” at the  top of your lungs…don’t think twice…just do it.

All that said, I have to admit, that sometimes, if the weather is juuuuusst right, and the road is empty enough, if I drive with the window down….I still imagine that I’m a race car driver…………

 
3 Comments

Posted by on April 16, 2013 in children, encouragement, fatherhood, humor, love, parenting, Uncategorized

 

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Did that chick Really just say……#6

11 Apr

This post is Fat Ethan approved

Fat Ethan Approved

So, by now we’ve become pretty familiar with the mischievous verbal stylings of one Ms. Kiara McDuffie.  So without further adieu, here’s another.

One day, the girls were outside playing.  Unbeknownst to them, they were playing in the  full, unobstructed view of Sharon and her sister Sherry who were inside; sitting in front of one of the windows and enjoying the heat of the sun as it poured in.  Sherry was watching them play.

Outside, something took place between the two girls to change their playful mood and Kiara, still in FULL view of her Aunt , takes a few steps back a bit from her sister……..and flips her off.  Yep, she gave her the middle finger, shot her the bird, gave her the ole one finger salute.

Sherry, having witnessed the whole thing, tells Sharon  about what happened and of course, Sharon calls her into the house.

The conversation, I’m told went something like this:

Sharon:  Aunt Sherry said that she saw you stick your middle finger up at your sister.  Did you do that?

Kiara:  No Mama….I didn’t do that.

Sharon:  Look Kiara, Aunt Sherry SAW you do that.  You’re telling me that she didn’t see that?

Kiara:  I didn’t do that, mama.

Sharon:  Kiara, we were sitting right here.  Aunt Sherry was looking right over there at you.  Look at that window… See how we can see where you were playing?  Aunt Sherry said you did this, then you did this, and then you did this and then you flipped your sister the bird.  She saw everything. Now, do you want to tell me what happened?

Kiara:  I didn’t do it.

Sharon: So you’re saying that Aunt Sherry didn’t see what she said she saw.  Are you calling Aunt Sherry a liar?

Kiara,  with the straightest of faces, and after much thought,  replies simply with a shoulder shrug and says…….  “ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……….”

Did…that…chick… REALLY just say……?!?!?!?

 
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Posted by on April 11, 2013 in children, fatherhood, humor, love, parenting

 

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Okay…Back to our regularly scheduled programming….

11 Apr

First, I would like to thank everybody for hanging with me through my mourning.  It’s been a rough ride, but through it all..I have to say that I’ve learned a lot about myself…and my family.  Plus, I have learned to use my writing thing as my sanctuary and decided to stop running from my gift and embrace it.  .All that being said, I think it’s time to get back to some lighter fare here.  We all have to get back on the horse from time to time, now, it’s my turn.

(I’ll give ya all my post about my second daughter helping me thru this rough time tomorrow…)

ANYWAY……

So, I think it’s been well established, that I, by no means, think that I am a perfect Dad.  I already know that, and as often as I’ve said it, I bet that you know it by now too.   However, for some reason, every now and then, my daughters have an overpowering urge to remind me of it and they allow their mouths to run accordingly.  Sometimes they do it gently.  Other times they are about as gentle as a bull in a china shop.  I can’t really blame them though, because either way it goes, they always do it with a bit of the same smart aleck attitude that Daddy displays from time to time.  No matter how it’s delivered, though, sometimes a lil fatherhood ego check is a good thing.  So, I’m cool with them and  I have learned TRY to pay attention to them when they come.  

Now, here’e something that will help keep this whole post in  perspective.

Kiara = Patience….always has and probably always will.

I don’t mean that  SHE has much patience but rather the act of  just DEALING with her over the past few years took truckloads of it.  If I believed in karma and such, I would swear, that I must have been the world’s most mischievous, borderline EVIL creature ever to breathe air  to have earned some of the stuff that “chica loca”  put me through.    I bet, if I could have  seen God ‘s face when he  entwined my life’s path with Kiara’s….I would have seen a smirk..or at least a grin.

Don’t believe me?  Okay,  let’s see.  Let’s run through a laundry list of some of  Kee’s top masterpieces over the years:

1)      Hit a teacher with a rock in elementary school.

2)      Put Jell-o in some kid’s shoe during dance class at her after school program.

3)      When asked by her Uncle why she gets in trouble all the time, she responded  “ ’cause I be lying all the time.” (You hear that sound?  That was the sound of English teachers across the country gnashing their teeth after reading that.) 

4)      Kicked a boy in the crotch….bad enough to send him to the hospital and us to juvenile court. (Her excuse? She was aiming for someone else.  Yeah, that was her excuse.   NO SERIOUSLY, that was her excuse.  This brings up an interesting question.   HOW in the WORLD can your aim simultaneously be bad enough to MISS the person that you were actually aiming for AND be accurate enough to hit such a small target on the next guy?

5)        When instructed by a teacher to move to the front of the class because she wouldn’t stop talking,  said: “”You can’t make me move to the front…I ain’t Rosa Parks!”.  (This is my personal favorite.  Even though she messed up the historical FACTS, it was still kind of funny)

6)      The breaker box was in her room.  Once, when me and Sharon were at work, and my nephew who was acting as babysitter, put her  on punishment, she flipped  the circuit breakers to all the other rooms in the house REPEATEDLY throughout the day and acted like she didn’t know what was happening.  I only got the truth out of her when I explained that since we lived in an apartment, if our lights flashed like that….EVERYBODY’S lights would be flashing and that I would do an impromptu visit to all of our neighbors just to see how they had been coping with the “blackouts”…She fessed up.

7)   Convinced the teacher in charge of In School Suspension that she was indeed NOT Kiara McDuffie, thereby earning herself an hour or so more of freedom before her con was blown, and an extra day of “incarceration” was added to the end of her bid in the “pen”.

So, when I say that that things were  bad  I mean that they were so bad that that chick had  us SCARED to check the caller ID.  Sure, I bet that  that doesn’t make much sense to you does it?   It makes more sense when you  weigh in the fact that as long as we didn’t KNOW that the school was calling, that in our minds, we weren’t being bad parents.  We just didn’t know WHO was calling.  THIS way, we had  a certain level of plausible deniability, and after about a hundred calls a year from the schools, we were BOTH cool with that.  So, believe me when I tell you that we avoided that thing as if there might have been bill collectors on the other end,  liquid botulism mixed with rickets  dripping from the mouthpiece , and some  kind of Alien, communist, terrorist, psycho killer on the rampage electronic subliminal message that would travel through the lines and fry our brains if we picked up  playing in the background.  Yeah, it was like THAT.

To put it in perspective, this is how bad it was.  If  we ever checked it, and the call  was from the county school system, our thoughts would never be, “Hmmm….I wonder what good things the teachers have to say about Ms. Kiara today?”,   or even more realistically, “ What does the automated, voice recording system have to say about this week’s announcements?” but rather “DANG!  What the h.e double hockey sticks has Kiara done this time?!?!”.  I spent so much time at her school, that 1: the principal both knew me by name and 2: he half jokingly offered  me a job there so I could get paid for my time since I was always there anyway.

There were times when I just didn’t believe that there was anything that anybody short of an exorcist, could do to calm her down.  Don’t get me wrong, there were days when she was good, but when she decided she DIDN’T want to be, the proverbial bottom would drop out.  You  know how some church folk say that if you pray for patience, God will give you some  by trying the patience that you already have?  I think I must’ve prayed that prayer somewhere along the line, and for two to three years of getting my patience tried, my prayers were for God to allow me to take it back, and to wash my mouth out with a gasoline and bleach mixture for even asking.

After a while though, once I stopped with the pity parties and decided to learn from things, God allowed me to get some pretty good information out of the whole (or)deal.  One day I realized that Kiara  was a lesson for  in being a good Daddy and I will share some of what I learned with you.

1)  Taking away stuff that doesn’t matter to them ANYWAY doesn’t help as punsihment–  Kee was a difficult case because she was so smart, that putting her in her room and punishing her that way wouldn’t work.  She would always find a way to entertain herself.  If we took away her t.v. (which I now HIGHLY recommend not having in your kids’ rooms ANYWAY…) she would just make paper doll clothes.  Take away her tos and she would just sit there and draw.  But take away her DOLLS…..and THAT hit her!

2) Sometimes, it’s best to ignore some of the bad stuff they do.  It took me a while to understand that sometimes, kids don’t necessarily differentiate between the attention that they get when they’re in trouble versus the attention that they get for being good.  Sometimes, they just see any attention as….well attention.

 3) Rewards the good stuff.  This one kind of goes hand in hand with number two.  I learned that through a combination of ignoring some of the smaller bad stuff, and rewarding as much of the positive stuff as possible, I could SOMETIMES, steer her behavior in a positive direction.

4) Force them to slow down sometimes.  Kee’s mind operated at a million miles a minute.  While I was talking to her, I could often see just how much (or how little) attention she was paying to my words.  A trick that I learned was to make her slow down and concentrate on what I was telling her to do by asking her REPEATEDLY to repeat what I had just said to her.  That way, i could make sure that she at least HEARD what I was saying.

5) Explain the consequences of their actions.  Again, this is one of those things that kind of ties in with the previous tip.  Not only did I force Kiara to slow down to understand what I was telling her to do, but I would also make sure that I stressed to her the consequences of her actions.  There were times that I would say stuff like “Kee, if you get in trouble at school today, understand, that that’s like saying that WHATEVER I choose to do to punish you, you’re ok with it…So think about if it’s worth losing your dolls for a month, or no t.v., or no dessert for a month before you do it.  Now, what did I you just hear me say?”

6) Understand, that sometimes, in order to punish your kid, you have to be ready to get punished yourself!  THIS one was a DOOZY for me…What the heck do you MEEEAAANNNN that if I tell her she can’t have any t.v. on the weekends that that means I can’t have any either?!?!?!?  Well, in order to enforce the punishment, sometimes, I would have to do things to make sure she couldn’t circumvent the system.  I couldn’t have her sneaking down the hallway and watching t.v. from behind my chair simply because I couldn’t stand not catching the evening episode of Sportscenter.   Besides, someone had to make sure that her time wasn’t just wasted and that meant that I had to play warden and pop in on her often.

Thoughts????

 
16 Comments

Posted by on April 11, 2013 in children, encouragement, fatherhood, humor, life, love, parenting, Uncategorized

 

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Sometimes, The Words Work (pt. 1 of 2)

08 Apr

This emotions are still pretty raw for me, so I probably won’t get any “style points” for this post…but I think this may help someone one day, so I’m going to share it all with you…

It was march 24th, 2013 when the world smacked my family in the  face….and I was presented with some choices.

My brother Sidney died that day, and for a moment…well, quite a few moments, I started to doubt the meaning of everything….and for me, the world seemed just a bit  darker.

… leave it to my daughters to help me back to the light.

Now, first, I have to bring you up to speed on something.  Most of my writing here is about things that took place between me and my daughters years ago.  Some of the stuff  are things that they did when they were really young…Sometimes, like this one, they’ll be more recent.

I have always said that I might be a tad overprotective (okay, okay, so I’m a LOT overprotective) of my daughters, and so when Kiara (now 20) presented me with her request to attend the wake, I didn’t know how to respond.   o put it bluntly, I didn’t think she could handle it, so I was hesitant to let her go.  This was her very favorite uncle and he  had been her favorite from the first moment that they met.  Kiara is brash, excitable, WAAAAYYY melodramatic, and wears her heart on her sleeves just like him.  The two were kindred spirits, and it was obvious every time that they got together.  Thus, their nicknames for each other, “Old Man” and “Old Woman”.

So,  I told her that she shouldn’t go, that it would be too much for her, and that she should stay with my mother who couldn’t bear the thought of going through the pain of seeing her son in a casket twice.  I could hear in Kiara’s voice that that wasn’t what she wanted, but  she didn’t argue it much.

“Okay, Dad.”

Later, when I took a moment to think, I realized that she might NEED that time to release some of her pain.  I decided that it was wrong of me to deny her the opportunity to say goodbye to this man that played such a special role in her life.

I picked her up and we were on our way back to the funeral home.  When we pulled into the parking lot, I looked at her and said, “Kee, you don’t have to do this.  This is going to be one of the toughest things we’ve ever had to do.  I understand if you can’t do it.  If you want to change your mind now, that’s cool.  You can stay out here in the car for a while.  I can get someone to take you home in a little while, but I need to stay until it’s done.”

“I’m okay, Dad.  I want to go in.”  We did.  I took a seat at the back next to one of my aunts and let Kee find her own place in the room.

She  went in and took a seat near the middle of the room with some of her cousins.  Eventually, they worked their way to the casket.  I stood watch, guarding her silently from the back of the room; waiting for the slightest trigger that would send me running up to her to throw my arms around her and protect her from the pain of the moment.  It never came.  She surprised me.  She was  stronger than I ever hoped she would be.  I remember thinking at that moment, “She’s gonna be a strong lil’ woman one day.”,  and with that thought..I got a glimpse of that old light again.

An hour or so later, as things at the wake began to wind down, she looked at me and said, “Dad, if you speak at the funeral, make sure to make people laugh.  Don’t say anything to make them cry.”    Right then and there, I knew what I had to do….even if I didn’t know exactly HOW I would do it.

I’m not really a plan ahead sort of guy so, the next day, during the service, I started to scribble my thoughts on my copy of the program….

Photo 1

When the time came, I rose from my seat, and began to walk to the front of the church, where my big brother’s body rested.  As I walked, I  simply let the words start to climb out on their own.

“Praise the Lord Church.” I said; silently asking Him to give me the strength just to keep my voice steady.     I continued.  ” Now, I could lie to y’all and say that there was no snotting up of shirts, no tears, no bawling and no questioning of things…but I’d be lying to ya…I COULD lie, but I’m not going to.  The truth is that there was a lot of all of that going on over the last few days..but last night at EXACTLY 8:02,  God spoke to me and said “You are a warrior and a man of God, now act like you know what’s up….”  (God speaks to me simply, ‘cuz I’m a simple guy.)  So right then and there, I decided that I was going to stop honoring the death of my brother with my tears and start to honor  his life..”  I reached up to grab the pair of shades that I had on to hide my red eyes, and pulled  them off my face…”So, I don’t think I’ll need these anymore”,  I said…throwing them over at the feet of one of the musicians.

I went on to talk about how my brother’s three favorite things were family, friends and fishing.  I tied his love of family into a story about how he loved to play Scrabble EVERY single time we came to the house.  Even though he KNEW he had no chance against my superior arsenal (LOL) , he would always ask me to play.  For him, it wasn’t about the actual playing though…it was about the time SPENT playing.  All that was cool, but I had stopped playing with him about a year ago.  I felt I needed to share that with everyone, so  I called forth every bit of the eloquence  and grace of speech for which I am well known and delivered my explanation as to why I stopped.

“You know…I stopped playing Scrabble with him about a year ago.  You know WHY I stopped playing with him? ”  I paused to look around to see if I had their attention, cause it was time to try to get some laughs.  Raising my voice a bit, I continued.  ” Because he CHEATED!  That dude made up more words than Jesse Jackson at a political rally!”

(I heard some laughs….a lot of them…….Got ’em!!!!!)

I ranted and raved a bit more about everything about our heated discussions about which was the better branch of the military, the Air Force, or the Army, (The AIR FORCE,  of COURSE) to how I was better than him at fishing ( I wasn’t, btw  but that was another discussion that we always had.)

As I was speaking, I looked out across all the faces that had gathered in memory of my brother.  I actually saw more  smiles, than tears.  I looked over to my mother.  A couple of times, I saw a small smile on her face…not huge smiles, but there were smiles.   I had done exactly what I had set out to do.  I made people laugh and not cry.  Kiara showed me the importance of that.

I ended my talk with a salute to my brother.  I turned to his casket, popped a firm Air Force quality salute and said one last thing to him :  “At ease soldier…at ease.”  My  voice cracked just a little at the last word, but it had lasted just long enough.

Now, I COULD lie to ya’ll and say that I haven’t snotted up a few shirt sleeves, bawled til my eyes got red and wondered about God’s plans since the funeral, but I ain’t gonna lie to ya…I COULD…but I’m not going to.”  But at least now, I know what’s up.  

Thanks for allowing me to share this  with you guys.

(I’ll tell you about the strength I got from Tee in part 2)

 
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Posted by on April 8, 2013 in bereavement, children, death, encouragement, fatherhood, humor, life, love, mourning, parenting, Uncategorized

 

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