42 years ago, right now, just a little after midnight, my father started complaining of indigestion
4 hours later he would be dead; I watched the moment this happened, live and 3D . . . my relationship with my father was "complicated" and was turning a corner in a truly positive way, finally, in the year before he died
he was 56; I was 22 . . . the first of many deaths that would seem a little #too_common in my life over the years. I think my quotient of sudden unexpected deaths for people close to me is way past "the norm"
as a result of the geography of his death -- we were on a trip to Kentucky when he died . . . my life took sort of an unexpected turn
I was engaged to a beautiful young woman at the time of his death that I broke off and ended up, slam bam, turning around and marrying someone else, the "true love" of my life, who divorced me months later -- because I started talking about "seeing things" . . . and never saw again
this, for sure, (marrying Jo Jo and not marrying Jan) would not, in my opinion, have happened had he died 2 days earlier or 2 days later . . . but I was a reckless impetuous thing and girls (then, anyway) seemed to like me in a hurry . . Jo Jo and I had a series of brief "love affairs" from prior trips
she had a boy friend and yet still always saw me whenever I was there
we got together and went to the mall one day and that was pretty chill (although we "talked") but we (God, mysterious ways, that speech)
were thrown together in the days following my dad's death and just stayed together round the clock from then on
this caused some "issues" . . . in multiple directions
my beautiful funny Southern Belle (ex) wife wanted to get back together after she left but her family blocked this because, based on some of the things I said, they thought I "was crazee" . . . imagine a MAGA family of the time dealing with a 22 year old flamboyant "chick magnet" pretty boy version (and a Yankee, to boot) of what you see today; uh huh
I am not convinced they were totally "down with me" . . . #understatement
. . . losing Jo Jo was the first, and biggest, price tag I had to pay in order to try and harness the psychic tsunami that was about to start making (big) waves
it was also the end of anything resembling normalcy in my life, even though I was later married for years, had a corporate job and a beautiful magical baby . . . the original fracture happened after this divorce, because I tuned it and her out
and then the "psychic thing" and well, there was no bottle to put the geni in any longer
she ultimately died very young, not long after the marriage ended, as did my next major "girl friend" (we started living together a year after my divorce)
who got leukemia at 22 (I was at the doctor with her when she was diagnosed; a fiery, sexy, woman she had seemed healthy as a horse 3 days before) and was dead at 27 . . . there were more of these strange out of nowhere deaths around me still to come "as time went by"
culminated, of course, with the stillbirth of my daughter years later
within two years of my father's death, I would be a psychic prodigy wonderboy in San Francisco making the salt shaker slide across the table just by "looking at it"
a lot happened at lightning speed after his death . . . my world was literally night and day different after it happened
this is an old photo of my handsome father with the jet black hair and his little blonde son, a son he no doubt loved but could never really #understand
his nickname for me: "oddball"
not exactly, in my opinion, a term of endearment
and even though I was universally acknowledged pretty much by everyone as super smart, movie star good looking and with a "golden tongue", my "weirdness" (at least to them) was still always front and center
again, think artist outlaw in MAGA country . . . but that was the country into which I was born
of course, December 22 is a day I think about every year
and will as long as I have a mind with which to remember :(
Rudolph Childers Brewer (May 25, 1921 - December 22, 1977)