Hopper died. Okay not the real Hopper. If you watch Stranger Things, the big hulking sheriff with the beard, the huge man with the kind heart, saving the little girl, saving the town.
This guy Bill looked exactly like Hopper. He came to our stocking party at Christmas. He's the dad of some cousins in our family. He was like maybe 50. His (newer) wife thought he was sleeping in, she went in to check on him, he was dead. Died in his sleep. Heart attack they say.
Nathan says how do they know it's a heart attack. What if she killed him. Where were the kids. How do you tell kids someone died. Do you not tell them?
They'd eventually notice, I said.
This guy once showed up at our house, on our lawn, with the two kids he was raising zooming around like spazzes, they were not easy kids, and he took them on when his girlfriend (the mother of them) became a drug addict. So Bill wasn't related to us except by trauma, and sacrifice. And dedication. Anyway he showed up on the lawn one day with a wrapped present and I said Bill hi what're you doing here and he said oh, we're here for the party
And I looked down at my pajamas and then I said um the party is next week end.
He stared and kind of laughed, then we both laughed and the kids were running in circles because these two kids have more energy than some entire classes I've subbed. This guy Bill was huge, not fat, just a giant man, blonde, beard, apparently an ex cokehead and ex is always good when paired with coke head. He decided to fly straight and then took on these kids when the girlfriend decided NOT to be an ex cokehead.
The only other thing about Bill besides his tall physical presence was one time they were here at a party and the kids wanted to go see the horses. So they followed me through a gate and he turned around to latch the gate right and he said always leave a gate the way you found it. And I said hey I never thought of that.
And he was just at passover last month, and sitting at our table, and I came late and I didn't even really say hi to Bill because I didn't get over there and I thought oh well next time, he's so nice and now that's his last time sitting there, with his smiley self, the gentle oak shading his sunny kids, he called his daughter Sunny, he had no idea that it's way easier to raise some kids, these are the ones he got and he was doing an incredible job where I woulda had my hair in an afro from that full time energy, with that gig. He was big enough to absorb it all, and not give up. There wasn't a piece of him that wanted to give up.
He had partnered up with this other wife after the willowy bio mom/drug addict continued on her way, exiting the scene. This other wife loved our horses even though she musta had some kind of injury cause she dragged her legs around, they bent kind of sideways when she walked like it hurt to move and she kept saying she wanted to help trim my horses, she used to know how to do horse feet. I would love to have help with the horses but she'd have to be able to move her body safely in emergencies and I sorta worried about her.
Now I really worry about her. On her own with those two, and no oak to lean on. He looked like he mighta held them all together.
B said man I wish I had known him better. Why didn't I know him better? Because he was always on the periphery at parties, the dad of b's brother's grandkids. Part of the family but over there in that part, and a face we liked but we hadn't had the time to know yet.
We didn't know we didn't have the time. He didn't know.
The gate thing, and the missed party, this is all I really got from Bill. What about all the other things and secrets we'll never know. What about his band, and his art directing, and what he thought about in the car when he was alone, what did he regret, what was his loudest laughing memory, what moved him, what did he picture when falling asleep, and his family, the one he made from shards of other things. His daughter wasn't even his daughter. When he took in his son, the daughter was a baby of another man, they had no one, and he took them both. He adored her. He's the only dad she knew.
The kids didn't understand when they told them their dad died. They were watching a movie and I'm sure they thought okay, well, whatever you say, but I'm sure he'll show up later, he always shows up. He's never not shown up. So.
I wish we'd known more, not just a little pink taster spoon from 31 flavors. There's so much we missed out on. We always miss out on so much because life is just tumbling at us, all the time, and it's so interesting. It's hard to catch it all in your fingers, it just leaks out like mercury.
I hope he grows a whole forest, wherever he is. He was a grove of gentle trees.
