On the theme of Gratitude
GOODBYE, BILL BUTLER
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
Though we’re apart
You’re part of me still
For you were my thrill
On Blueberry Hill
— Fats Domino, Blueberry Hill
“Fuck you, cock sucker!”
— Bill Butler, My Grandfather
While I was somewhere between Shanghai and Shenzhen smoking between the carriages on the overnight train, a mini beer keg was being purchased from a Costco in Richmond, British Columbia. Its express purpose, to hold the remains of my recently deceased grandfather.
The living do strange things when grief is involved. It’s okay, feel free to laugh.
I did.
∞
My uncle has the habit of taking control of any family gathering regardless if anyone wants him to or not. A little thing like hating his father did little to detour my uncle from taking control of the funeral arrangements.
It was Disneyland all over again.
My uncle had said some pretty horrible things to his father before he passed and whether they were meant or not does nothing to lessen the fact that they were said and could not be taken back.
My uncle had forgotten his last words to his father,
“I hope you die, you miserable old fuck.”
He then left for a three day fishing trip. My grandfather died shortly after the fight.
Upon being notified of his fathers death my uncle returned from his trip and ignoring the wishes of the family and of his father my uncle had his father prepared at a funeral home in his best sweatpants and favorite L.A. Rams cap for a personal viewing. Then he took several pictures and videos of he and his father as if they were enjoying a Sunday barbecue. My uncle smiling and rocking the thumbs up for the camera. I don’t believe this was malicious on my uncle’s part. I think he felt rotten for saying what he did to a dying man and for the years he spent holding grudges against his father. I think he just didn’t know how to process it all, there were things he wished desperately to take back. That’s life and death, you can’t take anything back.
My uncle finally complied with the deceased’s wishes and had his father cremated.
It wasn’t that a conventional urn was too expensive. My uncle just felt that a mini beer keg would be more fitting and a suitably symbolic abode for his father’s earthly remains. It’s true my grandfather had always been a hard drinker so it was clearly the best and logical choice — for my uncle — at the time. What do I know? Maybe my grandfather didn’t mind.
Once I heard about all of this, the whole thing gave me strange dreams over the following weeks. I would dream that I was sitting in the keg with my grandfather, like Genie’s bottle abode in I Dream of Genie. Except my grandfather’s keg was more masculine in its decor and he was sitting in his reclining arm chair with his giant remote control (that he used due to his arthritis) and was flipping through channels, but every channel was a Magnum P.I. rerun. My grandfather loved Magnum P.I.
Sure the whole thing was more than a little strange but that wasn’t the end of it. My uncle drove around the city, grandpa in his keg riding shotgun. The father and son dinners, the one sided conversations at the dinner table. It’s no wonder everyone thought my uncle was losing his shit. He had. Yet no one said anything. When someone goes that far down the rabbit hole people tend to give them a wide berth. There was still hope that things would word themselves out. Maybe.
We all deal with grief in different ways. My uncle was reliving Weekend at Bernie’s whereas when I received the news of my grandfather’s passing. I found the nearest cafe open in Shanghai at 9AM and got drunk while listening to and singing my grandfather’s favorite song, Blueberry Hill, and cried like a baby.
My father on the other hand walked out of the hospital after my grandfather was pronounced, got in his rental SUV and drove across the Granville Street Bridge to the nearest crack den to do a shit ton of crack. I can’t specify what a shit ton of crack is but to give you an idea, my father is the man who dropped a burning rock on his dick while free basing and taking a piss. Instead of rushing to the hospital to — I don’t know — get a skin graft for the severe burns on his penis he fished around the bathroom floor for twenty minutes while his cock was on fire so as not to waste a perfectly good rock.
Across the bridge he found a local crack den, tossed his keys to some junkies on the street and told them,
“My father is dead. I’m going in there for a while to do some crack.”
In any instance it is never a good idea to hand over the keys to a high end and expensive automobile to dope fiends. “Hope you got insurance on that mother fucker.” Which my father did not, because that would cost extra and he doesn’t roll like that. He had some grief to kill and some crack cocaine to help him do it.
Three days had passed when my father finally dragged himself out of that crack house. I can’t know what state my father was when he came out. Not good. I don’t know. I never asked him. What I do know is that when he hit the sidewalk his SUV was waiting for him, washed, polished inside and out. Not a scratch on it.
The local junkies had cared for it and watched over it those three days. They gave their condolences to my father has they handed over the keys. My father got in and drove away. He may be a deviant but he wasn’t about to miss his father’s funeral.
∞
The whole family was huddled around tables at the Legion in Fort Macleod, the town where my grandfather was born and raised. We had just set up for the wake and were waiting to start the service. My grandfather had wanted to buy one last round for his friends and family, so the bar was open. My grandfather got off lucky, nobody was really in the mood to drink, which was strange because that’s usually all we ever did at every and any family function. I did steal a bottle of whiskey for later. It was owed to me from many Christmas’s passed.
I remember going upstairs to use the washroom. When I returned I found the bottle of scotch my aunt had bought me empty. I’d been gone for ten minutes. I looked at my grandfather and he just winked at me. Touche old man, touche. I couldn’t begrudge him that, nobody ever let the old guy drink scotch because it turned him into an even bigger asshole than he usually was.
It had been a lovely Christmas, one of my favorites and the last that would spend with my grandfather. I loved that man.
The family was terrified my uncle would lose it completely during the eulogy and we all waited for his final break with reality.
It never came. Instead my uncle gave an honest and heart felt eulogy for his father and he cried and felt better for it I think. The catharsis, the letting go of anger and hate, taking a few moments to remember a simple story about his father, was enough to set things right.
The story my uncle told was how he and my father and their friend went down to the river after being told not to go there due to dangerous flooding. They went down anyway. Nothing bad happened at the river, but when my grandparents found out about it, my grandmother ordered my grandfather beat them stupid.
My grandfather did what he was told but got half way though and discovered he didn’t have the stomach for it. He told my grandmother that if she wanted the boys punished, she’d have to do it herself from now on.
He was a boozer and a grumpy old bastard but he loved his kids and his family. Most of them just never realized it when he was alive.
∞
We went down to the graveyard and we dug a hole under the concrete cover where the remains of my grandfather’s baby girl and his sister lay. We placed the keg holding my grandfather ashes inside. My grandmother, who suffers from dementia and was constantly asking where her husband was, seemed to finally realize that he was dead, so she cried and we poured some airline-sized vodkas and whiskey down the hole for his last drink and said our goodbyes, while my cousin played taps on his trumpet.
It was a sunny, cloudless day. Hot. Everything was still so when one mighty gust of wind came from nowhere scattering the empty bottles, the dried flowers then the dust, only to disappear and leave silence and more stillness in its’ wake, all of us knew what my grandfather was grateful for.
Author Biography
W.M. Butler is a Candian writer living in Shanghai, China. He is editor-in-chief of Hal Publishing Shanghai and co-founder of Far Enough East.