Okay, The Last of the Aunt Linda Chronicles

 We had my Aunt Linda's ashes in the rental car for a few days coming along with us, and it felt kind of weird. It was good feeling waking up that final day in town knowing we were sending them to their final resting place. Aunt Linda lived a good amount of her life in a house she designed with her late husband high up in the mountains of Colorado. My mom got in contact with the people who currently owned that house as well as her neighbor and longtime friend who would be our guide to the stream where the ashes would go. This neighbor's name was Joe, and he gave us the much needed detailed directions, as GPS would wave bye bye as we ascented into the mountains. 

The higher we climbed into the mountains we saw why Aunt Linda loved living up there. Sure, UPS and the US Postal Service wouldn't deliver to you. Sure, any time you wanted to buy something you would have wind your way up and down a half hour trip each way, but wow, if you saw this place you would know what they mean when people say the live in God's country. Her husband, Jim, died and for around nine years she lived by herself up there chopping wood and maintaining the place as best she could until the bats took over. The place we ended up cleaning out was the one looking up into the mountains with the strict homeowners association, the one where her heart was never in it, where her gutters grew trees and her grass grew like Vietnam. Her heart was never in it and she was too old to care. It made me understand that where her ashes would be spread by her former property, where she spread her late husband's ashes, that's where she would want to be. 

Joe said we would see his white pickup truck, and sure enough there he was. He stepped out smiling, and he looked to be in his 80's. The first thing we noticed is that he had a Norway shirt, and he told us that Linda bought him that shirt when she went on her trip to see her relatives. This broke us all up. Joe led the way in his truck, and our rental car probably didn't have the right all wheel drive setting because we were slipping all over the place. Eventually we got up to Linda's property, and wow. I got it now. All those Christmas cards she sent with photos she took, they were all from that property. It's as gorgeous as you could ever imagine. Joe led us on foot downhill to the stream, and he was slipping and making me nervous because he was so old. I told him that I could go in front and he could just fall into me if need be, and he seemed to take a bit of offense saying something to the effect of, "I've lived here all my life."

We finally got to the stream and Joe gave us a little space to do our ritual. I had the ashes in my hands, so I took the lead with the pouring of the ashes and the speech. My sister filmed, and my mom cried for one of the only 5 times in my life I have seen. There is video of this, and maybe I'll put it up some day - but I'm yet to watch it. I'm not ready.

I only took a few things from her house, but one of them was an envelope of all her Christmas cards over the years labeled "KEEP!" I noticed one of them was a shot of what looked to be that very stream where we dumped the ashes from 2007. I texted my mom that picture and asked what year Jim died and she said "2007" and a sad face emoji. Fuck. I lost it. 

Seeing those ashes flow into the river, becoming part of it, to be forever lost in it, the final resting place just absorbing into that stream, it's so permanent. Brutal. We only have so much time on this earth. Shit. I don't have anything else to say, guys. 

The Second To Last of The Aunt Linda Posts

Day after day we pulled the rental car up to Aunt Linda's house, with her car parked in the driveway, and went in there to clean up, throw things away, and decide what was worth the sentimental value for the family or of value to anyone else. By the third day in a row driving up there I must admit it felt like punching into a job that I hated. The work was hard physically as well as emotionally. We finished the days drained with our feet aching like we were waiting tables on a double shift, our knees and backs hurting from being on the floor in funny positions going through endless stuff, looking for her will, finding what would need to be shredded, and what would go into the endless trash bags. 

The kind of things aunt Linda kept were the kind of things that didn’t make it easy to just throw things away. You had to sort through all of it and then you had to pull out all her little sticky notes that she had in her books because you couldn’t give them away to someone else with your aunt's crazy notes inside. She had so many notes written down on envelopes and kept them long-term. Why?

Prior to living in the house we were cleaning out, her and her husband Jim lived up the the mountaisn of Colorado in a house they planned entirely. But for some reason they had extra everything such as wall outlets and electrical sockets. After her husband died she got to old to maintain the mountain house, she couldn't chop all the wood anymore at her age, and bats of all things took over inside. When she moved out of that place to a nice Colorado community back in civilization, she took all of the extra stuff from when they built the mountain house, all the door hinges, electrical outlets, and everything else to the point it was like an aisle at Home Depot if you wanted one of some shade one just every single type. So someone who wants stuff for their garage to have everything would be nuts about that but if the niche person doesn’t come to an auction then it's all going into a landfill.

My mom said it was definitely a stressful way to spend her birthday but it was an enjoyable day because she spent it with her kids and she has great kids. We for sure had some nice times at night reminiscing. I tried to explain to my sister and my mom what was so sad about my days working in Aunt Linda's home. Her having such a cluttered house forced me to have to sift through her whole world, all her areas of expertise, photography, sewing, alternative medicine, architecture, birds, and motorcycles to name a few. As a result I learned more about who she really was for really the first time, and she was already dead. I was too late. But the process forced me to properly mourn her. Of course I didn't get through trying to explain all this without crying, and I had a hell of a time stopping. I can't remember the last time I did that in front of anyone. You ever notice when people start crying when they hadn't planned on it, it's often when they try to explain why someone or something was so important to them? It's something about that explaining process where you're trying to get it out and just lose it. 

Oh, and then on the plane ride home we had one of those giant planes with the rows of two on the sides and a big row of four in the middle - and it was totally full. Very scary thinking about catching Covid on that thing. Then this Asian guy in tinted blue glasses hops on board the plane without a mask. The woman next to him said something about being scared of getting sick, and this asshole says, "We're all going to die some time. We can't live in fear. Then he launches into something about how he has guns and how he pets his gun like an animal, and how he will shoot anyone on his property. He says he lives in California and the governor there is a communist. He's saying this all loudly to make sure people around him hear his nonsense. My sister says to me just as loudly, "This would be a great time to put on some headphones!" I said back even more loudly, "Yes, some loud music. The louder the better!" And then my sister tipped off the flight attendant that this guy wasn't masked up. He put it on, but then since he was in front of me diagonally, I could see that he would let it dangle off his ear for long stretches of the flight. I double masked it. What a festering pile of bat guano this dude was. Like the bat guano that took over my aunt's house so long ago.

Okay, that's all I got. Take care, everyone. And reach out to those relatives you don't talk to enough. If you don't have kids of your own, reach out to those nieces and nephews. Or just make sure you keep a nice circle of friends as you get older. I would hate for any of you to let your circle shrink and shrink to the point where you're just pounding vodka all day and letting all your hobbies and interests sit in tons of Tupperware tubs for your relatives to have to sort through in an emotional weekend like the one I had. 

I was out with an old friend recently to see Dean Ween at a tiny Lincoln Park bar, and you know when someone mentions something assuming you already knew this monumentally huge bit of information?  So your mind is blown, your heart sinks, and you have to interrupt the person and ask that they back up and repeat that part to be sure you heard it right.  I don't see this friend often, and I see the peripheral friends in that circle even less.  I guess he assumed that I knew that Pimp was dead. 

Pimp is our good friend Brad's little brother who was named Pimp because he wore green shoes one day.  It didn't take a lot to get a lasting nickname back then.  Apparently  a group of friends went out to Oregon to visit another guy Norm (another nickname) who lived out there.  Norm decided to take everyone hiking.  There was a little bridge that everyone crossed.  Everyone but Pimp.  Just as he was about to cross, an avalanche/mud slide or something crashed down, swept him up, took him down, and killed him. 

Those shoes may have looked like these.

I was crushed when I heard he was dead, and then I was even more devastated when I heard how.  What a freak accident and a violent end to one of the nicest guys I've ever known.  Norm feels horrible because he asked that they come out and visit him and took them on the ill-fated hiking excursion, but he in no way could have known this would happen.  It's hard to imagine everyone watching that avalanche come down and see their friend die, for Brad to watch his only brother die, and all of them rendered completely helpless to stop it. 

Pimp never drank a drop of liquor or beer.  We would all be hanging out in their basement drinking our faces off, shooting pool, playing cards, and listening to music.  All the while Pimp hung out with us drunk idiots and never had a bad word to say about anyone.  He was such a good dude.  He looked like C. Thomas Howell only slightly goofier looking in an endearing way.  One day he brought a girl out, she was really damn pretty, and we were all impressed.  He ended up marrying her.  They were both really quiet and nice folks.  I remember him going off to school to be an architect, and that was his line of work until his untimely end.  He was a really solid fucking dude.  

I decided not to go with a pic from "Soul Man."

Pimp, you will be missed, old friend.  My first drink tonight is for you, and if I had some green shoes, I would be putting them on right now.

Your Friend,


 Doctor Kenneth Noisewater  



 

This Post Has No Point . . .

. . . but whatever.

I went to the Bulls game tonight with some good buddies.  On my way home I had to stop at the grocery store to get some socks because I have been too lazy to do my laundry and need some for tomorrow.  I wanted to stop off and get something to eat too, but because I didn't want to make another stop, I got some jalapeno chips and a gatorade.  Socks, chips, gatorade, and this worthless update . . .

I decided I needed to research a few things I was thinking about tonight . . .

1. A guy named Malcolm Thomas checked in for the Bulls and did pretty well for the Bulls tonight, and despite all of us being Chicago sports fans, none of us had heard of him.  It turns out he played for the Bulls' summer league team but ended up playing in Israel before being signed.  Hard guy to figure out a nickname for . . .

2. I was telling my buddy James Douglas Morrison that I have been reading the Keith Richards biography, and he asked if he mentioned the rivalry between the Stones and the Doors.  No, was there one?  I'll look that up too . . . I could find nothing about that on the internet, but if there was one, based on what I have read, I would say it would be about Mick hating on Jim because he was a better-looking front man using his sexuality the way Mick did.  Keith is pretty open about how nutty Mick was about a lot of stuff, but I will say that at least Mick was never nearly as big a junkie as Keith, so there's that . . .

3. This has nothing to do with looking anything up, but I was thinking about it.  Yesterday I get a text from my father that read: "I was saddened to hear of the passing of Annette Funicello.  As a boy watching her in those sweaters on the "Mickey Mouse Club," she made me love boobs.

A special place in hell for the turd who shot and killed Dimebag Darrell. If you're crazy, go get some help, and if you're a crazy with a gun, shoot yourself before you decide to shoot anyone else.

Richard Dawson, Long Time Host of the "Family Feud" Recently Died . . .

. . . and does anyone else remember how he was always kissing contestants on the mouth?  That seemed odd to me even as a little kid.  In this clip, he meets a very horny family of women who all seem to want to get in his pants when he kisses them.  He then admits that he got "aroused."  Well, Richard, you were a very funny man and had a great career, but your best accomplishment will always be laying these four sisters backstage.   

Greetings

When I was a kid, my dad started getting these mysterious dirty greeting cards delivered in the mail.  Because they were unsigned and there was no return address, there was no way to tell who was sending them or why.  We could tell it was a male's handwriting on the envelope, but that was about it.  I don't remember how, but my dad figured out it was a good friend of his who would pick up a dirty greeting card in whatever town he was traveling to for work and send us these hilarious cards.

Even after we knew it was him, he continued to send them every now and again, still with no signature, and I would be the first to rip open the envelope to see the dirty jokes and naked people, even if they were usually cartoons - they were still naked.

It was really sad to hear that this friend died a few years back.  I wish I could have known him more as an adult because he seemed like my brand of people.