Thanksgiving Memories

It's Irv--

One year ago today my grandparents, and a social worker sickeningly sweeter than Splenda, spent their last hours on earth.

I witnessed the whole thing.  And as I've admitted earlier here, I buried the social worker in the backyard.

I miss my grandmother.  I miss the way she'd cuff me on the chin and say "don't end up in prison, boy."  I miss the way she'd take me out in the backyard to target shoot with her 12-gauge, and how when the neighbors pit bull went insane she'd shoot the hose water over the fence and sing "Purple Rain."  I miss the way my grandmother baked yams.  Okay, baked "yam."  

It was a tradition with my grandmother to only bake one yam.  One giant yam.  The biggest friggin' yam she could find.  My grandfather told us she'd go on Ebay and find the biggest yam available.  She'd give them names each year, like "Old Yamaguchi," and "Yamn, Girl!" Cooking these behemoths would take all day.

My grandfather would sit out in the living room and tell stories from his days in prison, while the smell of baking giant yam would suffocate us all.  He'd tell us of the time he convinced the parole board he had been rehabilitated and even made love to two of the board members, before being released, and how on the very next day he held up a Whole Foods Market and stole $1,100 and a cashier at gunpoint and drove to Nevada in the cashier's car.

He was caught the next week and sent back to prison, and met my grandmother (a corrections officer) during a "Scared Straight" workshop with local Methodist High School kids.

They'd both laugh.  I saw them kiss once.

Now, they're dead.  Uncle Vick shot them both.

My grandmother was no angel, and the social worker's disgustingly chipper voice even made the pit bull next door queasy, but they didn't deserve to die.

Today, on Thanksgiving, held captive here in an undisclosed location by the fat kid, Marcus, I think back on what I have to be grateful for...

While Marcus is at Honeybaked Hams picking up our meal, and a "love bracelet for men" that he wants to give me from Macy's or somewhere, I'm grateful only for the fact that no one knows where I am.  A fit 38-year old with pointy black sideburns, with no job, and a family hereditary predisposition to appalling behavior.

Happy Thanksgiving to Whoever Reads This.

irv