Not that Uncle Garvin was mindfully trying to build in me an obsession with excellence or a hunger to succeed, but he stoked a fire in me to learn from failure and to ultimately believe that my greatest victories were the ones that followed a string of failures against the same foe. I'm lucky. I had someone who taught me this valuable lesson as a kid. Some parents today try to shield their children from the “pain and trauma” of losing. I don't think they realize that no matter how hard they try, these kids are going to grow up one day and learn this lesson the hard way. But by that time they'll be unprepared to face failure. God help us!
Since Uncle Garvin didn't own a car, he walked a lot. It's not like he couldn't afford a car, but I think in his mind, it was an expense he could do without. When he was at our house, it meant that we walked a lot too, because if we were going to hang out with him, we would spend a good part of the day walking around town to do whatever errands there were to do.
A part of Uncle Garvin's daily routine was walking to Jack's News Stand on the corner of First Street and Main just across the street from the Missouri Pacific train depot in Hope. Jack's was a grimy little store that always smelled like cigars and fresh popcorn. Cigars and popcorn don't make the most desirable aroma, but they sure create a memorable one! Jack's was Hope's main place to buy newspapers other than the local daily paper,
The Hope Star
, which was so small that instead of being rolled, it was often folded wallet size so it could be thrown easily by the kids on bikes who delivered the paper each afternoon. To get “real” papers, like the ones from Little Rock, Shreveport, or Texarkana, one had to go to Jack's. This was also true for magazines like
Time
,
Newsweek
, or
U.S. News & World Report
, although in those days, more people read
Life
,
Look
, and
Reader's Digest
(two of which don't even exist now). Jack's also had racy magazines like
Playboy
, which were kept behind the counter. Young guys knew they were there, but they also knew that if they attempted to buy one in the name of their “dad” or “older brother,” Jack, the proprietor, would simply ask “Dad's” name (though he probably already knew it, since Hope was so small) and pick up the phone to call to see if he really wanted his son to pick up a
Playboy
. The only future in that exchange would be an old-fashioned “whipping” with a belt or, even worse, one of the hideous green tree branches affectionately known as switches. I'm sure I'm offending the sensibilities of those who think corporal punishment a form of barbarism, but it never occurred to me at the time to think of myself as being abused. I was simply experiencing my early indoctrination into my father's form of patriotismâtrue patriotismâhe laid on the stripes and I saw stars.
After we walked to Jack's so my uncle could pick up a copy of the
New York Times
,
Houston Post
, or
Shreveport Times
to check the stock market and get the news, we'd walk back home and sometimes stop at Joe's City Bakery for a chocolate-covered doughnut. On the way back, since the fire station where my dad worked was only two blocks from our house, we'd usually stop there to see him if he was working that day. On afternoon walks, we sometimes walked the eight or ten blocks to the local Dairy Queen, which meant a soft-serve ice cream cone.
It was fun walking with Uncle Garvin because he didn't poke around. His walks were brisk, and walking around Hope with a man all dressed up in a suit and, usually, a light tan fedora made us feel like real big shots. He even wore what we called old man socks, which were actually midcalf silk stockings, but since all we knew were white cotton socks (even with jackets and ties), even those seemed pretty upscale.
The visits with Uncle Garvin were some of our favorite times of the year, but they weren't without some moments of frustration. He was more predictable than the Cubs losing to the Cardinals, and because he was an eccentric and lifelong bachelor, he was used to having things his way and on his own terms. He wanted his meals prepared so specifically that one would have thought he was ordering from the menu at the Four Seasons, and we always watched what he wanted to watch on TV, which meant that during his visits, Popeye cartoons and
The Three Stooges
had to give way to
The Edge of Night
, the evening news, and the aforementioned
Perry Mason
. Years later, as an adult, my wife and I would come to love watching
Perry Mason
reruns late at night, but I confess that it took me a while to get over my loathing of the show that I had been force-fed by Uncle Garvin when I would have rather been watching
The Little Rascals
.
It seemed that the regular visits from Uncle Garvin would always be a part of our lives, especially at Christmas. We always looked forward to Uncle Garvin's Christmas visits most because they were the longest and my sister and I were out of school and had more time to be home. Plus, Uncle Garvin would always give us a five-dollar bill as a gift, which for us was a lot of cold cash to have, since back then a movie ticket only cost twenty-five cents and a hamburger at Dad's Hamburger Stand only cost a dime.
Uncle Garvin was as much a part of Christmas for us as the tree and the ornaments. That is, until the Christmas of 1967.
In the fall of 1967, I noticed that my mother and dad had several phone calls with Uncle Garvin. That was unusual because in those days most of the communication between Uncle Garvin and my mother was through typed letters, his typed on old-fashioned tissue-thin typing paper on an old Underwood Five machine, and my mother's also banged out on an Underwood with a hand-operated carriage return and a little bell that rang at the end of a line of type. Long-distance phone calls were rare at my house and were done by dialing zero on the phone and telling the operator, “I'd like to make a
long-distance call
,” which sounded about as important as launching a satellite into orbit. Receiving a long-distance call was just as big a deal, and whoever answered the phone would run about the house shouting, “Long distance! Long distance!” All of this seems so long ago in the age of cell phones, instant messaging, and text messaging, but back then, the fact that a simple voice call from another city was occurring seemed like a really big deal that stopped everything in its tracks.
A few of those calls, more letters than usual, and worried looks on my mother's face finally culminated in my parents' sitting down with my sister and me and giving us news that would forever change our lives and our Christmases.
Uncle Garvin had cancer.
Cancer is a horrible word now, but in 1967, it was pretty much the same as death. When we heard of people getting cancer, we never asked, “Did they catch it early enough?” but rather, “How long does he have?”
My mother told us that all those calls and letters were not only about the fact that Uncle Garvin had been diagnosed with cancer but also about what to do about it. The good news was that he lived in Houston, home to some of the world's best healthcare specialists as well as the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center. The bad news was that his doctors had told him that his lymphoma was incurable and none of their treatments would help him.
My mother told us that Uncle Garvin would be coming to live with us full time because he had no place to go and would need increasing care during whatever time he had left.
Our house wasn't very large to begin with, so having him come to live meant we had to make some major adjustments to accommodate more than the usual Christmas visit. My parents moved from their room into my sister's room, and she and I shared space in the attic, which had been somewhat walled off to create a makeshift room. There was a partition that gave us somewhat separate spaces, but we had very little privacy.
Having a dying man come to live with us meant much more to my sister and me than just a move to the attic. We could no longer have friends over because it might disturb Uncle Garvin, and we had to cease playing music at high volume. By this time, I was very much into my guitar, playing with a band, and loving not having parents home in the afternoons so I could play loudly, so this was a very hard transition for me. It also meant that we'd have to help out more around the house, and we'd also have to assist in caregiving once we got home from school and before our parents could be home.
Instead of taking the bus to our house like he usually did, Uncle Garvin flew from Houston to Texarkana that November, and my dad drove the thirty miles to the airport to pick him up and bring him to what would be his home for the last few months of his life. When the car pulled into our driveway, we rushed out to meet him, and from that very first moment, I knew things weren't the same. While he was clearly trying to act chipper, there was a pained expression in his face that I had never seen, and he seemed frail. The confidence he had always exuded in his upright posture and meticulous grooming weren't as evident, and that would be the best he looked until the day he died.
My mother, of course, prepared the normal welcome-home dinner of fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and all the accompaniments, and this time Uncle Garvin didn't even have to stop at the store to ensure the menu. My sister and I had been told over and over again not to overload him with questions, especially about his cancer, but to try to just act like everything was normal.
From the very first meal, however, there was nothing normal about it. He had come with two suitcases this time instead of one, and many of his other things were on their way in a Bekins moving truck that would arrive a few days later. After he put his things in his room, we all gathered at the kitchen table for our first meal together as a now-extended family.
We had barely gotten under way with loading our plates and starting to eat when I heard Uncle Garvin call my mother's name. I saw a strange look on his face and sat stunned as he tried unsuccessfully to hold back vomit. After a scramble to get a pan, a bucket, a trash canâanythingâI saw something I'd never seen before in this man of strength and steely resolve. He cried.
And inside, so did I.
Other relatives had died, but most of them were more distantâgreat-uncles or great-aunts who were old and passed away, and a few younger ones who died suddenly of a heart attack or even in a car wreck. Yet in all those instances, we didn't really see the process of deathâjust the aftermath. Even on the death of my dad's aunt Clara, who committed suicide, we learned what happened from our parents, but in a sanitized version, and while we went to the funeral home for the obligatory visitation and then to the funeral, the whole process was rather calm even though surreal and unsettling. This was different. Death didn't get announced to us at breakfast one morning or after a phone call, and we weren't shielded from any of the grim details. We would watch as death slowly took each bit of strength and dignity from a man who had always represented to us nothing but strength and dignity.
I will never forget the look of humiliation on my uncle's face after that moment at the dinner table. If he had ever had a moment of weakness or fear or vulnerability, we'd never seen it, and he was clearly embarrassed that he had ruined a meal for us and had been unable to maintain his rigid and erudite Methodist deportment.
He lost more than his dinner that night. He lost what he valued more than his Gillette stockâhe lost his independence. And I lost more than the privacy of a room; I lost my childhood innocence.
I had always envied my Uncle Garvin because of his stubborn independence. Since he had no wife or kids, he answered to no one except himself. If he wanted to go somewhere, do something, or buy something, he only had to take his own counsel. I always thought he had it great, but that night I realized that he also had something I'd never known beforeâhe had loneliness.
It had never occurred to me before that being independent and unencumbered by other people's schedules, likes and dislikes, and needs also meant not having the stability of knowing that there would be someone around to share your burdens or help shoulder your load.
My parents hired a young woman named Margaret Wilson to come and help take care of my uncle during the day when they were working and we were at school. She would come in the mornings and leave not too long after my sister and I came home. After she left, it was my sister's and my responsibility to take care of things until one of our parents got home. We loved Margaret. She was afraid of nothing, full of spunk and inexhaustible joy, and as a bonus, she was a wonderful cook. That was helpful to my uncle but also took a big burden off my mother. If Margaret had to leave early, my sister and I would prepare meals, clean, and provide care.
In the four months that Uncle Garvin lived with us until he died, I had to do a lot of growing up. My entire family was pretty much consumed with taking care of an eccentric and at times demanding man whom we watched slowly deteriorate from a virile and proud man who needed nothing to a fragile, weak, and broken man who could no longer bathe, shave, or dress himself on his own. This left an indelible impression on me as a twelve-year-old kid, and some of the sights, sounds, and smells of those days are scratched deep in my soul. Some things hadn't changed. We still had a tree, but the fresh pine smell was covered by the ever-present odor of Pine-Sol, which we constantly used to clean and cover up the hideous smell of sickness and impending death, a smell that is still etched into my memory.
We all knew that the Christmas of 1967 would be our last Christmas with Uncle Garvin, and so did he. I think in many ways we all tried to savor every moment of it by doing normal things like playing Christmas music on the record player and baking Christmas cookies, but at the same time there was an unspoken but vivid resentment that a person who was a major part of our lives was being taken from us by an insidious disease that cruelly devoured his life by the spoonful instead of allowing him to die quietly and with dignity. As the disease got stronger, Uncle Garvin's strength to fight it dwindled, until he ultimately surrendered any vestige of volition and became little more than a swollen human form animated by his breathing and heartbeat but barely resembling the person we knew him to be.