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mallorys_cameraAnother one of my half-brothers has hit the dust.
Dale.
Learned about it on Facebook.
And that’s actually one of the reasons why I stay on Facebook: It’s my only contact with my father’s side of the family, and contact may come in handy if I ever end up needing blood-compatible donors for, say, a kidney transplant.
Not that Dale’s kidneys would have come in handy. Or Dale’s heart. Or Dale’s liver. Especially not Dale’s liver.
###
Found out about the death through a posting from the reformed meth head half-sister: RIP to my brother Dale.
The posting was kind of a sidebar to frequent progress reports about a Facebook game called Criminal Case. Denine wants to share coins with me! Denine wants to share orange juice with me!
What happened? I texted Denine.
He passed Thursday at 11:38 pm, she texted back. He's been in a coma for a month. Sorry I didn't message you.
Ya gotta love that time stamp. I suppose that kind of specificity makes her feel like she somehow owns the event.
Yes, but what was the underlying cause? I persisted.
I don’t know, she said.
###
Jeanna had called me the day before – I suppose to tell me the news.
I love Jeanna, but there’s no denying that her IQ has gone down many percentage points since the Seventh Day Adventist moved in with her. She’s happy, and, of course, that’s all that matters. But she was much more fun when she was in love with Amma, the Hugging Guru.
So I have avoided talking with her over the past few months.
My bad.
But you know. I’m like that.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t really know,” Jeanna said. “No one has actually talked to Dale in years.”
###
Dale was an incredibly handsome man.
You would not necessarily know it from this blurry photo of him and Jeanna, taken on one of the trips they made to Mexico in the late 70s when they used to hang out. But I have a couple of photos of him from a few years earlier that might have made Michelangelo weep.
By the time this pic was taken, Jeanna was off all drugs except weed (which she did not consider a drug), but Dale was still smoking crack, and I assume doing meth when crack wasn’t available.
He worked in various low-level capacities with the Vegas Mob, got busted several times but it didn’t stick.
He was a pretty smart guy, too. Completely uneducated, but smart. Ended up with his own little HVAC business in, of all places, Scottsdale, Arizona. Married again. His first wife was smart enough to flee with a protection order in place. There is a daughter from that first marriage whom Jeanna tries to keep in touch with. The daughter’s apparently very smart too, and is now in college.
Dale didn’t deserve the life that was inflicted on him, but then, none of my father’s children deserved the life that’s been inflicted on us. But here it is anyway!
###
I can’t pretend to be psychic, but there’s no denying that I’ve been feeling really angry and hostile over the past few days – before I heard about Dale – for no apparent reason. So, you know. Maybe I knew it somehow.
Thing is, Dale could have amounted to something if he’d been given even a breath of a chance.
But he wasn’t.
None of us were.
And that just makes me incredibly furious.
Dale.
Learned about it on Facebook.
And that’s actually one of the reasons why I stay on Facebook: It’s my only contact with my father’s side of the family, and contact may come in handy if I ever end up needing blood-compatible donors for, say, a kidney transplant.
Not that Dale’s kidneys would have come in handy. Or Dale’s heart. Or Dale’s liver. Especially not Dale’s liver.
###
Found out about the death through a posting from the reformed meth head half-sister: RIP to my brother Dale.
The posting was kind of a sidebar to frequent progress reports about a Facebook game called Criminal Case. Denine wants to share coins with me! Denine wants to share orange juice with me!
What happened? I texted Denine.
He passed Thursday at 11:38 pm, she texted back. He's been in a coma for a month. Sorry I didn't message you.
Ya gotta love that time stamp. I suppose that kind of specificity makes her feel like she somehow owns the event.
Yes, but what was the underlying cause? I persisted.
I don’t know, she said.
###
Jeanna had called me the day before – I suppose to tell me the news.
I love Jeanna, but there’s no denying that her IQ has gone down many percentage points since the Seventh Day Adventist moved in with her. She’s happy, and, of course, that’s all that matters. But she was much more fun when she was in love with Amma, the Hugging Guru.
So I have avoided talking with her over the past few months.
My bad.
But you know. I’m like that.
“What happened?” I asked.
“I don’t really know,” Jeanna said. “No one has actually talked to Dale in years.”
###
Dale was an incredibly handsome man.
You would not necessarily know it from this blurry photo of him and Jeanna, taken on one of the trips they made to Mexico in the late 70s when they used to hang out. But I have a couple of photos of him from a few years earlier that might have made Michelangelo weep.
By the time this pic was taken, Jeanna was off all drugs except weed (which she did not consider a drug), but Dale was still smoking crack, and I assume doing meth when crack wasn’t available.
He worked in various low-level capacities with the Vegas Mob, got busted several times but it didn’t stick.
He was a pretty smart guy, too. Completely uneducated, but smart. Ended up with his own little HVAC business in, of all places, Scottsdale, Arizona. Married again. His first wife was smart enough to flee with a protection order in place. There is a daughter from that first marriage whom Jeanna tries to keep in touch with. The daughter’s apparently very smart too, and is now in college.
Dale didn’t deserve the life that was inflicted on him, but then, none of my father’s children deserved the life that’s been inflicted on us. But here it is anyway!
###
I can’t pretend to be psychic, but there’s no denying that I’ve been feeling really angry and hostile over the past few days – before I heard about Dale – for no apparent reason. So, you know. Maybe I knew it somehow.
Thing is, Dale could have amounted to something if he’d been given even a breath of a chance.
But he wasn’t.
None of us were.
And that just makes me incredibly furious.
