No good way to take such a fall.
I am absolutely leaving this post public, because it's worth the read.
I've always known these things about him. I'm only sorry that it took something like this to make me really appreciate them.
My father was born on the outskirts of Chattanooga, to a mentally disturbed mother and a father who, evidently had very little patience for it. When their marriage ended, they dropped my father off at his great-aunt's house, and went their own, individual ways. My grandmother remarried, having five children with her new husband, and my grandfather also remarried a single mother, taking on her child, and having another with her. There may be more, I cannot recall...but the bottom line is, neither household came back for the child they had together. He was left with Big Pearl (Because my grandmother's twin sister was her namesake, and called Little Pearl...on a related note, my father really wanted to name me Pearl, while my mother wanted to name me Margaret. She got Candace from The Price is Right. *ahem*) and her husband Pete, who were poorer than poor and unhappily married. They were wretched towards each other, Big Pearl being hateful and dominating, Pete being retreative...spending most of his time drinking hot Coke out of glass bottles, and painting everything he got his hands on silver out in the garage. My father had one outfit for school, and one for church, he walked miles and miles to school along dirt roads, and that sort of thing.
He loved them, though. He never spoke anything but warmly of Big Pearl, full of admiration for the woman who essentially became his mother...and he was so fond of Pete. The stories were endless, and he loved his impersonation of Pete so much that he answered his phone in Pete's voice to ward off unwanted calls.
We found two newspaper clippings from Dad's youth amongst his photographs...one of a young man posed ready to throw a football. Young Willis Holder, football prodigy. Another shows him standing with a group of boys around his age, table tennis champions.
And then he joined the Air Force. He went through police training, he was in a while before he volunteered for four tours of Vietnam, three of which he got accepted for. He was so proud of his country, and absolutely passionate about it being his responsibility as an American man to get out there and fight it out. He's practically demanded, in the case of the Gulf War and with this stuff in Iraq, that they take him back. Of course, his age and health prevented that from happening. Anyway, he worked as hard as he continued to do throughout his life, and three tours in Vietnam earned him seventeen medals.
After Vietnam, my dad grew his hair out and joined a motorcycle gang. He met and married my mother, and they had me three years later. He laid carpet at the time, which ruined his knees and back. My brother came three years after that. My father then realized that he couldn't count on subcontracting as a long-term career, and sent out a resume to the City of Atlanta, and I talked about that in a post I wrote describing my father's memorial service. It was lovely, and a true sign of the times...a letter, essentially, about his life and his dreams and what a hard worker he was...it won the heart of the person who hired him. My mother and father divorced shortly afterwards, only to remarry a while later.
We bought a single wide trailer and moved into a trailer park across from the Atlanta Motor Speedway, in Hampton. One of my favorite stories, that I tell when I want to point out what a real man does when he has responsibilites that he takes seriously (much to the dismay of my ex-husband)...when our car was out of commission, and there was no other way for my father to get to work, my father put on his suit and trademark cowboy boots, and started walking down I-75, hitchhiking to downtown Atlanta. My father walked to work. My father took on a second job around that time, working as a night watchman at Emory Hospital. Because he had two children and a wife at home that depended on him, no one was around to offer up free help, and he knew what he had to do to take care of us, get out of the hole, and invest in the future. He worked up from having absolutely nothing, to leaving this place practically debt free.
He never stole a thing, and if he ever lied to me, I never knew it.
My father bought a chunk of land in Jackson, and we cleared out a spot in the middle of the woods and brought our trailer there. At the time, it was a magical place for me and my brother...we carved out a path through the woods to take our ATV, and spent hours in the trees, playing in the bamboo, catching green snakes, playing in the creek. We got an above-ground pool, and the cat that we brought with us, in no time, turned into a kitten farm. We had like...sixty cats in those woods, because my father didn't believe in keeping animals in the house. We woke up one morning and found millions of tadpoles and frogs in the pool. My mother got a dog that was half-Chow, and that marked the beginning of a steady stream of dogs coming in and out of our lives. Tiny balls of Chow poof would grow into fierce protective animals. And one by one, we lost them all, because we lived on a remote highway, with no fence, and not enough traffic to make a dog learn to stay out of the road. When it snowed, we hooked up a garbage can lid to the ATV and drug each other around on it. I spent countless days indoors, laying on my stomach, buried in books. We had wild blueberries, muscadine vines, dewberries, and we always had a little garden going with a variety of vegetables, but always with watermelon and, of course, peppers. My dad would throw huge cook-outs, with people chipping in to buy a whole pig that we would spend all day cooking in the ground. Flying kites, hot air balloons in the horizon, it was a wonderland for a little kid.
My father loved food. Loved to eat. And LOVED to cook. He loved barbeque, Cajun, thai, spicy stuff. I'll never be able to duplicate his marinara sauce, it was untouchable. He made the most amazing foods, he pickled the most amazing peppers. Of course, cooking for Dad was an all day event, so if you came hungry, you'd be starving by the time you actually got to eat. But that was part of it...beer, stories, helping out with recipes you've never touched before...it was the experience. He was so passionate about food, that we visited things like chili cook-offs at Stone Mountain, and Rattlesnake Roundup in Florida (rattlesnake...mmmmm). And in the last decade or so, whenever Dad took us out to eat, he spared no expense in order to partake in a memorable meal. Food was one of the few pleasures that he indulged in, but never on just himself. He ate poorly when he was eating alone, but when he was serving you a great meal, he shined.
He had music in his soul. Even though he didn't start learning to play the guitar until after Willis (my brother) took it up, and even if he never believed he got very good at it, his love for music was powerful. He didn't have an ounce of shame when it came to, well, anything...but he would throw his head back and sing his heart out for anyone that would listen. He loved blues, gospel, bluegrass, old country, and classic (Southern) rock. His identification with the songs he regularly sang, like Simple Man, was clear when you heard it. He sang loud, proud, and emotionally. And he wanted us to do it too...I remember us singing together on long road trips, his making me and Willis get up and sing in front of the entire church. He was so proud of Willis' musical ability, and had to perform with him in as many places as possible. They recorded a cd together for a family reunion, a few pieces of which were played at the service.
He told stories of the war, of women, of drugs and alcohol, of scuffles he's been in...if he thought he would have to pull his gun on you, he went into this Samuel L. Jackson-esque speech telling you to get right with Jesus because you were about to meet him. In the courtroom, if a criminal got violent, my Dad was the first to jump in for the fight. He was the life of the party, the center of attention...he captivated his audience.
When I was twelve, my parents divorced again, and that was the hardest thing that I think ever happened to him. No matter how distant our relationship got at times, his children were all he talked about, his primary concern, and he missed us like mad. When he got remarried to Marilyn, and her daughter, Amber, had a baby...that was his grandbaby. Jordan was his grandson, and he loved him as much as he would one of his own. He was crazy about children. I think he loved their innocence, loved watching them learn, loved running their energy right out of them. When Jaden was born, my father spoke kindly to my mother for the first time in, who knows how long, to remark about how much he looked like me and Willis when we were babies. And even though he didn't spend nearly as much time with Jaden as he wanted to, and even if Jaden didn't recognize him each time and hurt my feelings by rejecting my Dad, I don't think I've ever seen my father more proud. He was crazy about him. It really makes me happy that the last weekend of his life was spent with my son, who finally warmed up to him, who referred to him as Papa Will, like Jordan did when he was little.
When I was a teenager, I developed my own ideas, I started to develop my own beliefs, what I stood for...and those things were very different from my Dad's. I was liberal, I was open-minded, I was politically correct, and my father was...well, not so conservative, but he had his religious beliefs, he considered himself a redneck, he was stubborn and resistant to the direction that society was heading in. That's when I went from Daddy's Little Girl to Argumentative Girl That You Can't Identify With. Coupled with our moving a LOT, our relationship suffered, and it never got back to where it should have been. I quit high school, which caused us not to talk for a LONG time, I got into drugs, which made me fuck up a lot. No matter what, though, my Dad was always there if I needed him. When I was the most screwed up in my life, my Dad saved me from eviction, made sure I had a phone and electricity, bailed me out of jail. I got into a relationship with someone I knew he would never approve of, and I never introduced them in the five years I was with him, which made him suspicious of me. He co-signed for a car that I was late paying on, and eventually couldn't pay on anymore, so he took up the payments. And throughout those years, my appearance shifted more and more in a direction he wasn't comfortable with, even if he only lectured me on it a few times. He thought I wouldn't be able to make a successful life for myself, being so permanantly altered, by wearing the silly hair and clothing. And he's right...I would be a lot more successful today had I stuck with a job that I had to dress more conservatively for. I disappointed him time and again.
Since Jaden's arrival, he has had a lot more to be proud of me for. Not only did the act of getting married and having a baby get his approval, but my whole attitude changed about what my priorites were and what I had to do to better my life. The last conversation we had was about my determination to work hard in my education, to make a successful career for myself at the salon. I bragged about the potential should I apply myself, I talked about their education trips and all of the benefits of staying right where I'm at, and let him know that I was working towards being in a place where, when my ex-husband inevitably fails to provide child support, I would still be okay. He was always against my marriage ending, because he was a father who was seperated from his family and knows how much that hurts. He believed in family staying together no matter what, even if it meant my carrying Josh's weight without much help, because at least he would be with Jaden. "How can he pay you child support if he won't work?" "Well, Dad, I'd rather spend my money taking care of Jaden than taking care of another adult who can't consistantly help out."
I believe he went, not only knowing that I was going to work hard to make a life for myself and Jaden, and that we would be okay, but knowing that Jaden and I both loved him a lot.
Jaden asks for Papa Will every day.
And whether he would like it or not, I'm getting a tattoo in memory of my dad, and it will be unlike anything I've ever planned on getting, but I've got to keep it real.
I miss him so much. More than I ever have. I guess you never know how much you can miss someone until you know you'll never see them again.
I always worried about Dad being alone all of the time, but after the memorial service, I know that hundreds of people loved my Dad, he affected each person there enough for them to come out and pay tribute to him. He had people he had worked with for over twenty years, a few half-brothers that he kept up with, and a little barbeque place near his house that he spent nearly every night in, that now has a plaque at "his" seat. He spent every Wednesday night cooking for some of his closest friends. He had Willis almost every day, and me whenever our plans worked out to see each other. He had a grandson in Chattanooga, and another nearby. He was very loved, very admired, and will be very missed.
Seeing the impression that he made on people, it's natural to wonder what it will be like when it's your time. My brother and I were discussing it, and we were both sure that we will definately not have around three hundred people at our services. I believe that mine will be like Scrooge's, with Jaden and whomever he leans on for support. Because I'm dismissive. But if there's one thing that this experience has taught me, it is that there are people out there that really, really care about me, and I have about a dozen families. It makes me re-evaluate what is important, and who to focus my love and attention on, so that one day, people will remember me as fondly as they did him. It's a hard goal to reach, but I've finally inherited my father's work ethic, so I may be able to pull it off.
Now that the memorial service is over, I'm finally able to try and rest, to get out my private tears, to figure out how to function normally again. I'm eternally grateful that I've been given the opportunity to take a little extra time for the mourning that I wasn't able to go through for over a week while the biggest tragedy that I've ever experienced was happening to me.
Thank you for reading, for caring, for your tremendous show of support, for all of your offers of help, and even just letting me know that you're around if I need you. It really meant a lot, and it was far more than I expected. What an eye-opener this has all turned out to be.
I've always known these things about him. I'm only sorry that it took something like this to make me really appreciate them.
My father was born on the outskirts of Chattanooga, to a mentally disturbed mother and a father who, evidently had very little patience for it. When their marriage ended, they dropped my father off at his great-aunt's house, and went their own, individual ways. My grandmother remarried, having five children with her new husband, and my grandfather also remarried a single mother, taking on her child, and having another with her. There may be more, I cannot recall...but the bottom line is, neither household came back for the child they had together. He was left with Big Pearl (Because my grandmother's twin sister was her namesake, and called Little Pearl...on a related note, my father really wanted to name me Pearl, while my mother wanted to name me Margaret. She got Candace from The Price is Right. *ahem*) and her husband Pete, who were poorer than poor and unhappily married. They were wretched towards each other, Big Pearl being hateful and dominating, Pete being retreative...spending most of his time drinking hot Coke out of glass bottles, and painting everything he got his hands on silver out in the garage. My father had one outfit for school, and one for church, he walked miles and miles to school along dirt roads, and that sort of thing.
He loved them, though. He never spoke anything but warmly of Big Pearl, full of admiration for the woman who essentially became his mother...and he was so fond of Pete. The stories were endless, and he loved his impersonation of Pete so much that he answered his phone in Pete's voice to ward off unwanted calls.
We found two newspaper clippings from Dad's youth amongst his photographs...one of a young man posed ready to throw a football. Young Willis Holder, football prodigy. Another shows him standing with a group of boys around his age, table tennis champions.
And then he joined the Air Force. He went through police training, he was in a while before he volunteered for four tours of Vietnam, three of which he got accepted for. He was so proud of his country, and absolutely passionate about it being his responsibility as an American man to get out there and fight it out. He's practically demanded, in the case of the Gulf War and with this stuff in Iraq, that they take him back. Of course, his age and health prevented that from happening. Anyway, he worked as hard as he continued to do throughout his life, and three tours in Vietnam earned him seventeen medals.
After Vietnam, my dad grew his hair out and joined a motorcycle gang. He met and married my mother, and they had me three years later. He laid carpet at the time, which ruined his knees and back. My brother came three years after that. My father then realized that he couldn't count on subcontracting as a long-term career, and sent out a resume to the City of Atlanta, and I talked about that in a post I wrote describing my father's memorial service. It was lovely, and a true sign of the times...a letter, essentially, about his life and his dreams and what a hard worker he was...it won the heart of the person who hired him. My mother and father divorced shortly afterwards, only to remarry a while later.
We bought a single wide trailer and moved into a trailer park across from the Atlanta Motor Speedway, in Hampton. One of my favorite stories, that I tell when I want to point out what a real man does when he has responsibilites that he takes seriously (much to the dismay of my ex-husband)...when our car was out of commission, and there was no other way for my father to get to work, my father put on his suit and trademark cowboy boots, and started walking down I-75, hitchhiking to downtown Atlanta. My father walked to work. My father took on a second job around that time, working as a night watchman at Emory Hospital. Because he had two children and a wife at home that depended on him, no one was around to offer up free help, and he knew what he had to do to take care of us, get out of the hole, and invest in the future. He worked up from having absolutely nothing, to leaving this place practically debt free.
He never stole a thing, and if he ever lied to me, I never knew it.
My father bought a chunk of land in Jackson, and we cleared out a spot in the middle of the woods and brought our trailer there. At the time, it was a magical place for me and my brother...we carved out a path through the woods to take our ATV, and spent hours in the trees, playing in the bamboo, catching green snakes, playing in the creek. We got an above-ground pool, and the cat that we brought with us, in no time, turned into a kitten farm. We had like...sixty cats in those woods, because my father didn't believe in keeping animals in the house. We woke up one morning and found millions of tadpoles and frogs in the pool. My mother got a dog that was half-Chow, and that marked the beginning of a steady stream of dogs coming in and out of our lives. Tiny balls of Chow poof would grow into fierce protective animals. And one by one, we lost them all, because we lived on a remote highway, with no fence, and not enough traffic to make a dog learn to stay out of the road. When it snowed, we hooked up a garbage can lid to the ATV and drug each other around on it. I spent countless days indoors, laying on my stomach, buried in books. We had wild blueberries, muscadine vines, dewberries, and we always had a little garden going with a variety of vegetables, but always with watermelon and, of course, peppers. My dad would throw huge cook-outs, with people chipping in to buy a whole pig that we would spend all day cooking in the ground. Flying kites, hot air balloons in the horizon, it was a wonderland for a little kid.
My father loved food. Loved to eat. And LOVED to cook. He loved barbeque, Cajun, thai, spicy stuff. I'll never be able to duplicate his marinara sauce, it was untouchable. He made the most amazing foods, he pickled the most amazing peppers. Of course, cooking for Dad was an all day event, so if you came hungry, you'd be starving by the time you actually got to eat. But that was part of it...beer, stories, helping out with recipes you've never touched before...it was the experience. He was so passionate about food, that we visited things like chili cook-offs at Stone Mountain, and Rattlesnake Roundup in Florida (rattlesnake...mmmmm). And in the last decade or so, whenever Dad took us out to eat, he spared no expense in order to partake in a memorable meal. Food was one of the few pleasures that he indulged in, but never on just himself. He ate poorly when he was eating alone, but when he was serving you a great meal, he shined.
He had music in his soul. Even though he didn't start learning to play the guitar until after Willis (my brother) took it up, and even if he never believed he got very good at it, his love for music was powerful. He didn't have an ounce of shame when it came to, well, anything...but he would throw his head back and sing his heart out for anyone that would listen. He loved blues, gospel, bluegrass, old country, and classic (Southern) rock. His identification with the songs he regularly sang, like Simple Man, was clear when you heard it. He sang loud, proud, and emotionally. And he wanted us to do it too...I remember us singing together on long road trips, his making me and Willis get up and sing in front of the entire church. He was so proud of Willis' musical ability, and had to perform with him in as many places as possible. They recorded a cd together for a family reunion, a few pieces of which were played at the service.
He told stories of the war, of women, of drugs and alcohol, of scuffles he's been in...if he thought he would have to pull his gun on you, he went into this Samuel L. Jackson-esque speech telling you to get right with Jesus because you were about to meet him. In the courtroom, if a criminal got violent, my Dad was the first to jump in for the fight. He was the life of the party, the center of attention...he captivated his audience.
When I was twelve, my parents divorced again, and that was the hardest thing that I think ever happened to him. No matter how distant our relationship got at times, his children were all he talked about, his primary concern, and he missed us like mad. When he got remarried to Marilyn, and her daughter, Amber, had a baby...that was his grandbaby. Jordan was his grandson, and he loved him as much as he would one of his own. He was crazy about children. I think he loved their innocence, loved watching them learn, loved running their energy right out of them. When Jaden was born, my father spoke kindly to my mother for the first time in, who knows how long, to remark about how much he looked like me and Willis when we were babies. And even though he didn't spend nearly as much time with Jaden as he wanted to, and even if Jaden didn't recognize him each time and hurt my feelings by rejecting my Dad, I don't think I've ever seen my father more proud. He was crazy about him. It really makes me happy that the last weekend of his life was spent with my son, who finally warmed up to him, who referred to him as Papa Will, like Jordan did when he was little.
When I was a teenager, I developed my own ideas, I started to develop my own beliefs, what I stood for...and those things were very different from my Dad's. I was liberal, I was open-minded, I was politically correct, and my father was...well, not so conservative, but he had his religious beliefs, he considered himself a redneck, he was stubborn and resistant to the direction that society was heading in. That's when I went from Daddy's Little Girl to Argumentative Girl That You Can't Identify With. Coupled with our moving a LOT, our relationship suffered, and it never got back to where it should have been. I quit high school, which caused us not to talk for a LONG time, I got into drugs, which made me fuck up a lot. No matter what, though, my Dad was always there if I needed him. When I was the most screwed up in my life, my Dad saved me from eviction, made sure I had a phone and electricity, bailed me out of jail. I got into a relationship with someone I knew he would never approve of, and I never introduced them in the five years I was with him, which made him suspicious of me. He co-signed for a car that I was late paying on, and eventually couldn't pay on anymore, so he took up the payments. And throughout those years, my appearance shifted more and more in a direction he wasn't comfortable with, even if he only lectured me on it a few times. He thought I wouldn't be able to make a successful life for myself, being so permanantly altered, by wearing the silly hair and clothing. And he's right...I would be a lot more successful today had I stuck with a job that I had to dress more conservatively for. I disappointed him time and again.
Since Jaden's arrival, he has had a lot more to be proud of me for. Not only did the act of getting married and having a baby get his approval, but my whole attitude changed about what my priorites were and what I had to do to better my life. The last conversation we had was about my determination to work hard in my education, to make a successful career for myself at the salon. I bragged about the potential should I apply myself, I talked about their education trips and all of the benefits of staying right where I'm at, and let him know that I was working towards being in a place where, when my ex-husband inevitably fails to provide child support, I would still be okay. He was always against my marriage ending, because he was a father who was seperated from his family and knows how much that hurts. He believed in family staying together no matter what, even if it meant my carrying Josh's weight without much help, because at least he would be with Jaden. "How can he pay you child support if he won't work?" "Well, Dad, I'd rather spend my money taking care of Jaden than taking care of another adult who can't consistantly help out."
I believe he went, not only knowing that I was going to work hard to make a life for myself and Jaden, and that we would be okay, but knowing that Jaden and I both loved him a lot.
Jaden asks for Papa Will every day.
And whether he would like it or not, I'm getting a tattoo in memory of my dad, and it will be unlike anything I've ever planned on getting, but I've got to keep it real.
I miss him so much. More than I ever have. I guess you never know how much you can miss someone until you know you'll never see them again.
I always worried about Dad being alone all of the time, but after the memorial service, I know that hundreds of people loved my Dad, he affected each person there enough for them to come out and pay tribute to him. He had people he had worked with for over twenty years, a few half-brothers that he kept up with, and a little barbeque place near his house that he spent nearly every night in, that now has a plaque at "his" seat. He spent every Wednesday night cooking for some of his closest friends. He had Willis almost every day, and me whenever our plans worked out to see each other. He had a grandson in Chattanooga, and another nearby. He was very loved, very admired, and will be very missed.
Seeing the impression that he made on people, it's natural to wonder what it will be like when it's your time. My brother and I were discussing it, and we were both sure that we will definately not have around three hundred people at our services. I believe that mine will be like Scrooge's, with Jaden and whomever he leans on for support. Because I'm dismissive. But if there's one thing that this experience has taught me, it is that there are people out there that really, really care about me, and I have about a dozen families. It makes me re-evaluate what is important, and who to focus my love and attention on, so that one day, people will remember me as fondly as they did him. It's a hard goal to reach, but I've finally inherited my father's work ethic, so I may be able to pull it off.
Now that the memorial service is over, I'm finally able to try and rest, to get out my private tears, to figure out how to function normally again. I'm eternally grateful that I've been given the opportunity to take a little extra time for the mourning that I wasn't able to go through for over a week while the biggest tragedy that I've ever experienced was happening to me.
Thank you for reading, for caring, for your tremendous show of support, for all of your offers of help, and even just letting me know that you're around if I need you. It really meant a lot, and it was far more than I expected. What an eye-opener this has all turned out to be.