Beginning this is hard. Because I just found out my daddy is dying. I think I knew it, but everything changes when you find out for sure. It’s his birthday and his present is the news that the doctors can’t do anything.

“I cannot fix this,” the pretty foreign doctor said. “ We will make you comfortable and …” After that I don’t remember what she said. She said my daddy was going to die and that’s all I knew and that’s all that mattered in that moment. It’s his birthday. It’s his last birthday.

I want to say that she said, “You will have time to talk things over with your family. You will have time to discuss things that should have been discussed a long time ago.” But she didn’t.

She said something about Hospice. Why would she say that? Hospice was for people who were dying. But, it was true. My daddy was dying. That was what he was doing now. After years of not even knowing where he was. Now we knew where he was. He was in this bed. He was here. Dying.

It turned out to be the fastest long week of my life.

Daddy could be so funny when he wanted to be. He loved to tell stories. But never about the important stuff. I guess if we had listened harder, we might have figured it out. Of course, how would a child know that stories about drunk people at their worst wasn’t what every child was hearing at home.

Some of the stories were very funny like the one about Big Joe, one of Daddy’s pool shootin’ friends, smashing through the juke box because he wasn’t looking where he was going. Or something like that. The older I got, the more details I got. The friend part came later because he and Daddy didn’t know each other yet. Daddy and Big Joe had just gotten into a friendly game of pool and Big Joe was losing big time. Probably why it was so friendly. Daddy didn’t lose often and Big Joe had enough money most of the time that he didn’t really care one way or the other. He always said that he was too drunk to win when he told the story, but Daddy always said that he just sucked at pool. Said he was more interested in the food and the girls than winning, and sure enough,when Big Joe spotted the most beautiful woman he had seen in a “damn sight”, he decided to leave his losing game with the “pool shark” to go talk to her. But what he didn’t see was her jealous boyfriend, the guy he was losing the pool game to, behind him with a custom made cue stick aimed at his head. Big Joe only had eyes for that pretty girl but my dad’s eyes had already been on her for a couple of weeks now. He always told us that he loved that cue stick, but he loved his new girlfriend more and he didn’t much like guys, and especially drunk guys who owed him money, messing with her.

You see, that pretty girl eventually became my mama. Mom always said that Daddy just looked for excuses to hit someone, but I like the idea that he was so crazy in love with her. Well, that’s what I used to think. Never thought about how little time they had actually been together. Anyway, Daddy came around that pool table like someone was after him, “fast as a young colt about to be put in a pen”, and had busted Big Joe across his broad shoulders before anyone even knew there was trouble brewing. Big Joe lost his balance from the shock of getting hit and stumbled into Mama. Whoa! Talk about an even worse offense! I always wanted to say that it wasn’t Big Joe’s fault, but something always kept me from voicing such a reasonable suggestion. Besides, Mama and Daddy always looked so happy remembering the moment Big Joe jumped up and quickly apologized to Mama all the while turning to face the wild stranger that had stepped across a line as far as he was concerned. He wasn’t used to people starting stuff with him because he was so big, but his anger turned to a strange bit of fear when the wiry stranger jumped headlong into Big Joe’s midsection and they both slammed into the biggest jukebox any of them could ever remember seeing.

Mama said all she remembered of the actual fight was hearing the bartender cussing and screaming that he was going to call the police on them. She said she believed him because he had them there so quickly the night before when Daddy had another little, um, disagreement. I found out years later that it was they who had gotten the cops called on them because they were arguing so loud that the other customers had told the bartender they were leaving because of it. Anyway, after the scuffle that landed Big Joe in the emergency room with a bump on his head and some cuts from smashing in the big juke box in the corner by the bar, my future mom and dad actually went to visit him to check on him. This is the funny part. They all actually became fast friends and Big Joe eventually became Uncle Joe to me and my brother and sister. He ended up getting married to one of Mama’s friends and they were all friends until they weren’t any more. But that is another story for a little later down the line. I’ve pieced that one together slowly over the years, too. Always quick with the fun stuff. A little slower with the sad.

If it weren't for the stories, I probably wouldn't know much about my daddy at all. By the time I could really start remembering things, I was a lot like other kids..pretty egocentric. Sometimes I think I remember something, but I know that it’s more like remembering something that someone has told me or seen in a picture and my brain connects the picture with the audio. For example, I remember this video we had where my sister and I are dancing in the living room. This was before my brother was born. There are several people in the room and you can hear them laughing and clapping. The hit of the show is my younger sister. She is dancing like she’s had lessons, doing ballerina steps that meld into the twist followed by some sort of clog step. But what has the grown-ups so enamored is the fact that her petticoat panties are a little big, and with each twist or stomp, down come the pants. They’re really baby shorts, she’s only two, but they must have been my hand-me-downs or something because every wiggle sends them straight to the floor. She is enjoying the attention very much and continues to grab them every two or three seconds and hoist them back up to her baby waist. What’s so funny is the fact that she never misses a beat. It’s almost like she has been taught this dance and the big knickers are part of it.

All of a sudden you can hear an argument brewing in the background and if you knew them, you could tell it’s Daddy and Uncle Joe. You can just hear a snippet of the words here and there, but suddenly, loudly, “She’s my wife, so butt the hell out!” I can hear Daddy say. Joe says something, but since he is not yelling, I can’t make it out, but right before the camera is shakily turned off, very clearly Daddy tells Uncle Joe to ‘Get the hell out of my house, you mother..”. No, really. That’s where the camera goes dead. I've watched that video a million times and I never have been able to make out what Uncle Joe said because the music was so loud and he was talking so soft, but Daddy’s words have reverberated in my brain many times, especially on nights when I couldn't sleep.

I asked Mama one time what it was all about and she just said, “Where did you get that video, Blue? Have you been up in the closet again? You know I don’t want you playing in there.” She never would answer me, but I know she could, At the beginning of the video, my aunt is holding the camera and makes a big deal of giving it to Mama because she wants to dance with her ‘sweet nieces’. Mama was the one filming when the camera is turned off.

Even now, when I think about that video, I feel like I may know what the fight was about. But the blend of a child’s wish to remember, people’s dropped hints and false or fragmented memories make for a seductive, but unreliable truth. What I know now coupled with what I see and hear in that video gives me the sense that I know what the fight was about. But she won’t tell me.