Heart of the Matter

One time the old man took me downstairs to the basement to show me something .. he had about a 6 foot length of 3/4 inch copper pipe ... I remember he filled it with sand and then worked it into a coil .. the sand prevented the pipe from kinking .. I don't know whether this was to teach me how do do this .. or to show me that he knew how to do shit .. the coil hung by the furnace long after he had died ... there was a bench against the City Line wall of the basement that held his tools randomly spread over the top and a bottom shelf ... I learned to hate that bench and tools .. when I cleaned my mother's next house out .. that one section that contained the dresser I talked about ... I took all those tools to the scrap yard and sold them .. the original plan was to toss them into the harbour .. but I sold them for spare change and gave the money to my mother as part of some books and magazines I sold ... I had exorcised the demon ...

Another time we were all in Nova Scotia at my grandmothers .. and I had a pack of cigarettes .. and of course I never thought about the fact that you could smell cigarette smoke a mile away on your clothes ... my mother was always going through my stuff so she produced the cigarette pack .. and I got the no smoking lecture from here and my uncle ... so I walked up into the pasture and tossed the cigarette pack into the woods ... the old man found out later that I had been smoking so he gave me his version of the no smoking lecture and asked me where the cigarettes were .. I said I tossed them in the woods off the road running up to the end of the pasture .. the next day I noticed my father wasn't smoking custom mades .. there is a moral here .. but it escapes me ...

About a week before the old man died .. he was going around the house complaining about stomach problems .. obviously that was a symptom of the major heart attack that would kill him ... I told him to stop complaining and go the doctor .. he later apologized to me and said he would ... I never felt guilty about this .. I don't know why .. I feel guilty about everything else .. 

Remember the seven risk factors for a heart attack ... high blood pressure .. overweight .. smoking ... under stress ... high cholesterol ... male .. heredity ...the old man got 5 stars in every category and a bonus 6th star for stress ... he was a walking time bomb and it went off on the morning of 2 July 1972 ... I was on my way to Digby to spend the day with my girlfriend at the Digby Pines ... when we returned .. Bernard Lundy picked us up at the terminal ... the old man was gone .. Bernard dropped my girlfriend off at her mother's place ... a stones throw from Rockland Road ... we had come full circle ...

For someone gone so long he had a huge impact on my life ... in the end he did apologize .. and he did ask for me on his deathbed ... my mother once told me she had nothing to be sorry for ... well .. we are about to find out she does ...


Phil (5 January 2021 - San Patricio de Melaque - 7:33 PM)


Krome Koan- 'Heart attacks .. god's revenge for eating his animals'




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