The Next Book

Well, I've started it.  My next book.  My last was really a short story, but it still counts. Search me out on Amazon if you are interested.  My new book, that will actually be book length, is entitled "How Not to Live a Life."  It's ironic (and meant to be), because it is telling you how to live a better life than I have.  I'm not saying I haven't had a great life, but I am saying there has been some crap happen that I wish didn't, so consider the book a list of detour signs for success.

In this book, I am brutally honest.  Anyone who know me knows that I demand honesty from my friends and those close to me, anything less is unacceptable.  The moment you stop demanding honesty, is the moment you stop receiving it.  In my book, I talk about my past, my family, my friends, and in general everything in my life.  Writing this book has been extremely hard because I'm facing issues I'd rather not remember or address, but, for the sake of humanity, I do.  I will lose friends over the book, and well, that's ok.  If me calling you out on your behavior upsets you, well, that's really your problem, not mine.  The interesting part is that I, for the most part, haven't named names, so I'll find out pretty quickly who's guilty of what, by their own admission of guilt.  Sad, but true.

To give you a preview of the book, here is an excerpt, from the chapter entitled "What Happened?"

Where do I start? Well, I guess I should start at the beginning.  Not the real beginning, but my last beginning.  Confused?  It’s ok, I’ll explain.  When presented with a big life changing event, you have a new beginning.  Most people don’t realize that, they think they are a victim and have to handle themselves how everyone tells them to.  That’s a lost opportunity to improve upon one’s self.  I’ve made a lot of mistakes.  I’ve had a lot of new beginnings, but I’ve wasted just about all of them.  Maybe I should start with examples of what not to do.  I have a lot, so, get ready for some crazy stories, some I have never spoke of until now.

January 9th, 2006.  I was working at Mercy Hospital, the same place my father has worked for over 40 years.  We usually had lunch together, either at the office or at my parents house, since they lived fairly close to the hospital.  We were eating in his office, it was Mexican fast food, it was completely unhealthy, and completely delicious.  At this point my Pa-Pa (my father’s father) has been a resident at the local veteran’s hospital.  He suffered from Parkinson's Disease. He had good days, and he had bad days.  It had gotten to the point that communication was extremely difficult.  Admittedly I didn’t visit him while he was in there as much as I should have.  It wasn’t that I didn’t want to, but after most visits I would find myself in tears, even sobbing sometimes, on my drive home.  My wife would ask me if I was ok, and I’d tell the lie that is most commonly told. “I’m fine.”  I wasn’t.  I wasn’t near fine.  I felt that I couldn’t really talk about how I felt with anyone.  My Pa-Pa and I were close.  We had inside jokes.  We could usually figure out what one was going to say before it was said.  I love him dearly.  

I don’t know if it was because of his age, his veteran status, or his awesome attitude, but he didn’t give a single crap what anyone else thought.  That’s something I still struggle with, but he had it down.  On work days at his house, deodorant was not worn.  He didn’t care what he smelled like, if smelling bad was a product of his hard work, then he wanted you to know it.  It was hilarious, well until we got in his truck to go drop off debris at the city dump.  Sometimes there weren’t enough windows to roll down in the truck.  On one particular occasion, my Pa-Pa, my father, and I all were working on my grandparents yard (this wasn’t uncommon, three generations of Riggs can get stuff done), we loaded up tree limbs and leaves into the back of my Pa-Pa’s 1985 Dodge Ram Truck.  I was sitting in between the two biggest influences in my life.  I loved these rides.  Now, the deodorant was still not present and I think my Pa-Pa got a kick out of the fact I wasn’t near a fresh air source and had to endure it.  He had an awesome sense of humor that aligned with my and my father’s.  We got to the city dump, my Pa-Pa was quick to inform us that he had to relieve himself.  We just thought it was a comment in passing, and that when we got back to his house that’s the first stop he would make.  Why we were under that assumption is beyond me now, but to our surprise at the time, he walked over to his back tire and began to water it.  In plain sight of anyone who might be around.  It was just us at the time, well and the attendant in his little building, butI don’t think he saw.

When I was 12, I was staying on my grandparents for the weekend.  Saturday was always shopping day.  They might not have got me much, but they always wanted to get me something while I was there.  This was a really special treat.  To continue, we went to the local mall one Saturday, my grandmother (Ma-Ma) had a hair appointment at JC Penney, and while waiting my Pa-Pa and I had some fun.  He took me to the arcade that was in the mall (a ritual that continued until the arcade closed down), and then he and I went to JC Penney to wait on my Ma-Ma.  He asked me if I needed any clothes, partially joking because he knew that at that point in my life, I didn’t care to go clothes shopping.  Well, we went ahead and looked, and wouldn’t you know it, I found something I liked.  They were a pair of long baggy pants\shorts that were a patchwork of black, blue and yellow.  They were a little expensive, but he saw me looking at them and asked if I wanted them.  I showed him the price, and he said, “Don’t worry about that, do you want them?”  I did, and he could tell I did.  He said he liked them too, which I thought he was just saying that not to hurt my feelings, or prevent me from getting something I liked.  He was incredibly awesome at putting others before himself.  That trait has passed down to my father as well, and I hope it continues to me.  It wasn’t very long after our purchase that my Ma-Ma came walking up to us, hair newly poofed up and colored.  She asked what we got, I opened the bag and showed her.  The change in expression on her face was almost immediate.  She couldn’t understand why I would want those, and more to the point, she couldn’t believe my Pa-Pa bought them.  This would be the first time my Pa-Pa would say this, but it wouldn’t be the last, not for years to come: “Hey, I liked the pants.”  I loved those pants.

Back to 2006.  While about halfway through our lunch hour, my father got a call from the veteran’s center that they had to take my Pa-Pa to the hospital by ambulance.  At this point, this was getting to be a semi-regular occurrence, as there had been issues with fluid needing to be drained from his lungs, and other ailments.  We were pretty much done, so we walked over to the emergency room.  When we arrived, they were about to buzz us in to go see him, when the double door entry to the actual ER patient rooms opened.  Dr. Black walked out of the doors.  You never see a doctor come out from that door into the waiting area.  We were oblivious, we never thought that he was coming out to meet us.  The doctor was blunt, he was known to have little to no bedside manner, and he said to my father, “Bobby, he’s gone.”  What? What happened? What do you mean he’s gone?  He went on to say he was gone before he arrived.  Have you ever had that feeling (or loss of feeling) in your legs, like you are about to just collapse to the ground? This sucked.  This more than sucked, this was like someone just reached in, grabbed my lungs, ripped them out and said, take a deep breath.  This was the end.

My first daughter was born on December 29, 2005, 11 days before my Pa-Pa’s passing.  I never took her to see him.  He was aware of her birth, my father made sure of that, but they never saw each other.  I didn’t take her to the veteran’s hospital because she was so young and could easily contract any one of the many airborne illnesses that I’m sure were present.  I have not ever, nor will ever forgive myself for that.  I’ve had multiple people tell me I did the right thing, and that they are sure my grandfather would have understood.  I don’t care.  I really don’t care about what everyone tells me about this, I feel like I robbed both of them of their only meeting they would have had.  I know that it probably wouldn’t have made any difference in anything at all, but coming from someone who never met his grandfather (my mother’s father), I really wish I could have made it happen.

After his death, I fell into a deep depression. My wife at the time couldn’t understand.  How could she? She never lost any of her family at that point.  I had already lost my Granny (my mom’s mother), which was hard on me too.  I don’t deal with the finality of death very well.  My father was probably the single greatest source of comfort during this time.  He too told me to forgive myself for not taking Victoria to meet him, but other than that, he had nothing but great advice.  I found it amazing, how my dad, who just lost his own dad, was able to tell me that everything would be alright.  He was wrong, but that’s not the point, the point is, he meant it.  When I say he was wrong, what I’m actually saying is, that things got better, or different, but never alright.  To this day, I still wish with all my heart that I could talk to him just one more time.  Whether it’s healthy or not, I regularly make it by my grandfather’s grave, I update him on what’s going on in my life, in my girls lives, and report to him on how his son is doing.

Since my Pa-Pa’s death, my Ma-Ma has now joined him in parting this life.  I now continue to talk to Pa-Pa, but I now let my Ma-Ma know how my sister is doing, how her children are doing, and I update her on my sister’s dog.  My grandmother loved dogs and so does my sister.  As I had a special relationship with my Pa-Pa, my sister had one with my Ma-Ma.  My sister has a tendency to have no filter, and as such she tells everything like it is, and what she’s feeling at the moment, you are aware of.  When my grandmother died, exactly 9 years to the day on my grandfather, well, she was a mess.  I say that only because that shows how distraught she in fact was.  My sister always can keep her feelings under a semi-loose control, but this was one of only a couple of times I witnessed unfiltered emotion from her.  I didn’t like it.  I knew she was sad, and I knew I couldn’t do a thing.  I got to wondering, is this what people saw in me?  Is it still what they see in me?  All I know is that in that moment, I realized that it was ok to mourn, and ok to cry, but it was even better to honor their legacy by living.

In my life, I have witnessed my father cry only five times.  The first was when a very close friend of our family died.  The second was when his father died.  The third is when his younger sister died.  The fourth was when his mother died.  The fifth time, well, I’ll talk about that one later.

Sorry this was a long one, trust me, it could have been a lot longer.

Until next time dear readers...