An Open Letter to the Democratic Party

I’ve been a Democrat since I was a child. I watched John F. Kennedy when he was campaigning, and I was impressed that he cared about the poor people that didn’t have a decent home or food to eat. From what I knew, he was a rich man from Massachusetts and rich people didn’t really seem to care what happened to poor people.

I was just a child, but I had seen poverty. I was born on the South Side of Chicago, and I had family and friends in the South. I knew about poor people.

But the fact that this rich man was concerned and wanted to do something to help people was something that touched me. So, I decided I wanted to be like him and the only way I knew to do that was to support his political stand and so, years before I could vote, I became a Democrat.

My parents, both Democrats, were impressed at my decision.

So here I am all these years later. I’m retired and living on the pennies we get from Social Security knowing that it wasn’t intended to be this way. I struggle with medical bills that I shouldn’t have to worry about. I can’t get some of the care I need because some pencil pushers who work for the insurance company I have think I should have physical therapy before getting an MRI to determine exactly what is wrong with me.

I’ve marched, I’ve protested, I’ve written letters, made phone calls, joined groups, participated in events, donated money, posted signs and all those things that involved people do. I even tried to get a job working for the party.

Twenty years ago, when we were living in New Orleans, we went to the Meet Up events and got involved in helping get the vote out. We shared information and made friends and spent a lot of time spreading the word. I thought those meetings were a great idea and I was glad to be a part of it. I wish we still had them.

But nothing was done. Democrats were losing elections they should have won. We got together and tried to figure out what happened. Why did this keep happening? We had good candidates, we had plenty of good ideas and plans, and we were working our butts off. But we kept losing.

I wasn’t convinced at first when Barack Obama ran that he could win. As a Black woman, I knew the level of racism that was right under the surface in this country, and I didn’t think white people would vote for him. In fact, I thought he would probably be killed before the election. I was afraid for him.

I had been supporting another candidate, but I went to a dinner in Tallahassee, and I met Mr. Obama and I was instantly enamored. He spoke to me as if he had known me all my life and he held my hand and smiled at me and answered all my concerns. I quickly changed my focus even if deep inside, I was still afraid for him.

Later in his campaign, I was living in Chicago and a friend accompanied me to his campaign office where we offered our services to help get him elected. The place was running like a well-oiled machine, and they thanked us for the offer but politely told us we were not needed. We bought some merchandise, took the free items they gave us and left, more convinced than ever that he was the right person for the job.

We were in Grant Park that night when he won the election. It was a wonderful, magical night that I will never forget. I cried tears of joy and I wished my parents had been alive to see this miracle, a Black man elected President of the United States. I was never prouder to be a Democrat in my life.

That pride has pretty much gone away since then.

Whenever the Democrats lose, I hear the excuse that enough Black people didn’t get out and vote. They depend on older Black women like me to win elections but why not get out and get engaged with other folks to get their votes? Why not find more people to make up the base? Stop blaming us and do your job.

In 2004, I thought that the administration branch of the Democratic party was not doing enough to help candidates win. All I saw them doing was begging for money from us voters and I knew that wasn’t enough. I had ideas and I wanted to work for the party.

I got a polite thanks but no thanks for my effort.

When we met party executives, we asked them questions and they put us off as if we didn’t know what we were talking about. They didn’t answer us. They tried to shut us up instead of addressing the issues we were concerned with. I remember being furious about that.

The Obama campaign won because they put together an involved, engaged hard working team from top to bottom. They worked hard and worked with people to get the word out. They used social media like no one before them had. We were impressed with the work they did.

And he won.

When Hillary was running, we decided we wanted to get involved. We wanted to get yard signs and we went to the local headquarters. There was one young person there and he didn’t have any signs and the only way we could get merchandise was if we offered to make phone calls and knock on doors.

Or we could go to a location miles away where she was going to speak and we could buy signs and shirts and show our support. That was too far for us to go for something like that. We are a couple of retirees and we had no desire to do either one. Both of us had done it when we were younger, but it wasn’t something we wanted to do now that we were older. I volunteered to be an election watcher. We had done that in the past.

He gave us an address 50 miles away to try to get signs. We went there and they didn’t have any but told us if we paid them, they would have some sent to us. It all seemed so haphazard and sloppy and not well managed that we were put off and we just left. How could she win with a campaign like this?

And of course, she didn’t.

So now we live in Florida, and we are struggling under the DeSantis administration. It’s been clear from the beginning that he had no real thoughts about the people in this state and he saw being governor as a steppingstone to being President. He has pandered to the mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging minority and left the rest of us out in the cold.

Why didn’t the Democrats do more to get someone else elected in 2022? They gave up. Didn’t contribute enough money to the campaigns and no one came to this county or to this area to talk to people. They just left us to suffer. There were people here who would have listened if they had only tried to help us. Maybe they didn’t like Charlie. Why not help find another candidate who could have gotten more votes?

For that matter, why didn’t they help Stacey Abrams? Why not support her program to get voters educated in other states besides Georgia? Why not get out there and meet people and talk to people and spread the truth about what the Republicans are doing?

Why didn’t we fight harder against Donald Trump?

Why did the Democrats let Mitch McConnell cheat us out of a Supreme Court Justice?

Now they are trying to strip away the Voting Rights Act.

They are denying women the right to govern their own bodies.

Look what happened in Louisiana last month. And the mess in Mississippi that got that governor elected again when he shouldn’t even be picking up trash for a living.

How did the Democrats allow this to happen?

I don’t care about having talking heads on news programs. They need to get boots on the ground and get out here and actively work to get candidates elected. More ads on television. Look at all the streaming services and apps now. There are lots of ways to get the word out.

I get dozens of emails and I see posts on Facebook and Instagram urging me to donate money to the party. I don’t even respond to some of the issues because if I sign a petition, the next thing I get is a request for more money.

What do I get for my money?

So, you high paid employees of the Democratic party, you need to get out there and earn your keep. You need to get your Loubotins on the ground and have events and meetings and parties and whatever it takes to get more people concerned and involved. You need to buy more ads on television and online and start getting the word out. You need to find good people who want to be candidates and then you need to support them with lots of hard work. You need to fight the misinformation and you need to spread the truth.

You need to get out here and lead us. You need to help us. You need to support us. You need to stop begging us for money and start showing us why our money matters.

We want to get these Republican liars and thieves out of office. We want people we can trust to be on our side to represent us. We don’t want more of these people who use us to get elected so that they can get rich. We don’t want more embarrassments like Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Bobert and Josh Hawley sitting in Congress making fools of themselves and us. There are good people out there and they would run if they thought they would be supported.

We will fight for you if you fight for us. How about it?

Signed,

A Concerned Democrat

 

What I Believe...and Don't Believe

 

When I was a little kid in school and we had to pray every day, I wondered why? I did it in church and in Sunday School. Why in school?

As I got older, I thought about people of different faiths. Why weren't they allowed to pray too? It didn’t seem fair to me.

I asked a lot of questions about religion when I was younger and nobody gave me any good answers. They got mad at me or told me I shouldn't ask questions.

Why not?

I saw and heard a lot of things that I knew wasn't right.

Supposed religious men were saying and doing things to me that I knew were wrong. My very religious Mama told me I must have misunderstood or that I was lying. So, I stopped talking to her about it. Later on, she saw that I was telling the truth and she apologized. Sort of.

As I read more and tried to understand, some folks told me I didn't need to go to college because they would teach me things.

What things?

Again, no answers.

I heard more homophobic comments, more prejudiced discussions, all kids of hateful and mean things that shouldn't have been going on in church. I won't even talk about the sexual wrongs.

But I began to think as I got older that I didn't need to be involved in all that stuff. I didn't feel comfortable. I didn't feel at home.

I went with my mom to some of her Baptist conferences. The preachers were straight up showing their asses. They weren't acting like leaders. I wasn't seeing very many people who were real leaders at all. So, I started distancing myself from it all.

But then something really awful took place at the church I belonged to and I was appalled. And my Mom, the one who had always told me to not judge people and to be open minded and love everyone made some horrible homophobic comments.

I felt stunned, shocked and hurt. How could this be? She taught me to not be a bigot and here she was, sounding like a bigot.

I stopped going to church that very day. I began to mistrust so-called Christians. The people who displayed the most hatefulness, who told the biggest lies and were the biggest hypocrites sat their butts right there in church every Sunday, trying to tell others how to live.

I sat down and evaluated my own feelings and thoughts and came to the conclusion that I didn't want to be a part of that number.

I know that God and Jesus an'nem know we have a complicated relationship and I know They are ok with it. I know They don't require this blind, stupefying devotion that many seem to display. I don't think They mind my questions. Right about now, looking at these folks down here acting a straight up fool and blaming God; They probably have questions too.

Religion is one thing. Politics is another. Mixing the two is wrong and causes trouble. And it's not fair. These people here think that being a Christian makes them superior. They feel like they have a right to force their beliefs down everybody's throat.

But the problem is that since the beginning of time, everyone thought their religion was better than the other one. How many wars have been fought; how many people have died because of misguided religious beliefs?

Christians thought slavery was all right and took some stuff from the Bible to prove they were right. They said Black people weren’t even human to justify their treatment of us.

Someone said years ago that the most segregated hour is in church. For the most part, it’s still true. Some of the most horrible bigots alive thought themselves stellar Christians. Even the KKK claimed to be a religious organization.

Right now, there are Christians wanting to kill people because they are gay. They justify rape and child abuse and many more still worship and follow known pedophiles.

What are we supposed to think or believe?

I’ve studied the Bible both as a religious document and as a mere book. I’ve listened and learned. I’ve been in class where Christians got angry because we learned philosophy from people who weren’t Christian and wanted the professor not to teach it.

Why not?

If your faith is strong, you can stand criticism, right? If you know what you believe is right, what others think shouldn’t matter, should it? Does it shake your faith?

Why is what you believe more important than what others believe?

I have friends and relatives who are Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. I have friends and relatives who are atheists or agnostics. I have friends who have questions like I do and like me, never got answers.

But I also have friends who are Christians and others who claim to be Christians. I don’t have a problem with them as long as they know the boundaries.

I don’t force my beliefs on you, so be kind and do the same.

The one thing that sticks in my craw is how can you claim to be a Christian and then support and embrace Donald Trump who is as far from a righteous man as one can be? How can you follow him and worship him and then hate Barack Obama, who is everything Trump is not?

Ok, I know the answer to that so don’t protest.

You know what you are.  

Separation of church and state is a great thing. It is how this country was intended to run and how it should run.

If you get elected and you represent a constituency that does not agree with your beliefs, you should put that aside and vote and support them. That is why you were elected. Your job is to represent their beliefs, not yours. Don’t bring your church to your job.

Same with school.

Parents, it’s YOUR job to teach your children about religion. You are supposed to teach them morals and ethics and all that. Teachers are supposed to teach them reading, writing, math, etc. Oh yes, and history and science. Ugly as it might be, yes, they are supposed to teach them history. And science. You can tell them your beliefs and then let your children make up their minds about what they think and believe.

You pray with them before they go to school. Pray with them before they go to bed.

Prayer does not belong in school unless you take the whole first hour so that the Christians get their prayer and then the Jewish kids and then the Hindu kids and then the Muslim kids (and they pray 5 times a day!) and then the Buddhist kids and then the Native American kids…

See?

If you get to pray, everyone gets to. It’s only fair. Don’t want to do that?

Then no prayer at school.

Now you might think you want to argue or debate me on this.

Save it.

You will not change my mind anymore than I will change yours. Keep it to yourself. If you don’t like what I say, that’s fine.

Live with it.

I have a right to my beliefs just as you to yours. Let’s just agree to disagree.

But if your beliefs butt into my life and try to decide my own choices and decisions…well, we have a problem.

And I will fight you.

 

 

The Real Dirty Deal

I have been thinking about this a while. I don’t know that it’s true, but I also don’t know that it isn’t.

The ones who do aren’t talking.

Meanwhile, we are all struggling, trying to understand what has happened to us.

There was a time when political differences didn’t matter that much. We just took it for granted and agreed to disagree.

There was a law that said if one position was presented on television/ radio, etc., the opposing side had to be presented too. But then that law was gone.

And then came Fox News. Rush Limbaugh had been a terrible dee jay on a radio station in Missouri and suddenly, he was spouting all this ridiculous hateful stuff on the radio. Folks saw that he was getting rich and famous and since that was the goal of almost everybody, lots of them jumped on the bandwagon and started saying the same kind of stuff.

Meanwhile, the people who had thought history and political science were boring when they were in school, suddenly had opinions. Lots of them had not graduated from high school, probably had never even seen a college textbook, but wanted to talk to you like they were smart. You just looked at them in disbelief because you couldn’t believe they were saying that stuff to you.

They were against everything you thought we stood for. And while a lot of the had always been racists, they had never been bold enough to come right out and say it but now they were.

I remember one night driving back to New Orleans from Florida we put the radio on WWL from New Orleans. We listened in shock because it was some conservative preacher saying the craziest stuff like liberals were aliens from another planet and that if you agreed with them, you were going against Jesus and other madness I don’t even remember. We laughed about it then, but a few days later, at the casino where I worked, I heard some older people repeating that stuff to each other. I got chills.

 It didn’t matter how far out that stuff was – folks believed it and were repeating it.

Things went downhill from there.

All this time, these republicans had an agenda. They wanted to get rid of Roe v. Wade. The so called evangelicals aligned with them and so did the racists and the Klan. They wanted to go back to the “good old days” when women and Black people “knew their place.” They wanted to force their restrictive brand of Christianity on everyone.

So, all these folks who thought they were getting a rough deal in life – the ones who thought they should have been rich and important lapped it up like milk.

It wasn’t their fault they didn’t have that job or live in that house or got that woman/man they wanted.

It was “their” fault. They. You know. Them.

They took everything from them and these people understood and they loved it.

Didn’t matter that those folks were rich and were getting richer preying on their lack in education and gullibility. They were saying what they wanted to hear.

And then Barack Obama had the nerve to win the Presidency.

And these folks lost their minds. The racists took off their robes and capes and began to openly express all the mess their parents and grandparents had been allowed to say and do.

And the so-called pro-life folks? Well, they didn’t think they were racists, but if aligning with these people meant they could get what they wanted, they would hold their noses and stand with them. There were “Christians” there too, right?

So, things got really bad for us. Liberals. “Snowflakes,” they called us. They decided it was time to go to war with us.

They were quietly planning to do away with all our liberties and drag us back to the Dark Ages, but no one paid any attention. We just lived our lives and tried to go on and ignore them.

Couldn’t have been that many of them, right? And they were just the lunatic fringe. Most folks didn’t go along with that – did they?

Then this fool Donald Trump got insulted with something Barack Obama said about him. Didn’t matter that he accused the President of not being American and came up with this whole ridiculous “birther” thing. The unwashed masses grabbed it like gold and ran with it. Trump decided he would run for President.

Most folks laughed and said he had no chance. They didn’t think folks were stupid enough to vote for him. He said and did every possible thing wrong and still, he was considered a viable candidate.

We thought that he would lose in a landslide and boy, were we surprised when enough folks voted for him that he won the electoral college and was elected.

Hillary Clinton was a far better candidate with experience and great ideas and would have been a great president.

But the misogynists and the folks who hated her husband and the whole group of uninformed, uneducated and misled people rose up and voted for Trump.

What then?

Well, this is what I think happened.

When trump was running, he had a meeting with the republicans, they talked about what they wanted. They had a long-term plan to do away with Roe v. Wade and if he agreed to help them take it down, they would swallow their dislike and mistrust for him and support him.

So, they agreed.

He would help them get the conservative trash they needed on the Supreme Court. And those people knew what was expected of them and they would lie during hearings, but they had agreed to the republican agenda as well.

This has been in the works for years.

They would pass bills that would help their corporate buddies get past regulations and lower their taxes. They would help the people running in the local elections win so that they could bolster their evil plans. They would keep quiet and let Trump run roughshod on the nation. They wanted what they wanted and he would give it to them.

You tell me in what other instance a man who accused of rape can sit before a Congressional committee can lie and cry and repeat over and over how much he likes beer and still get on the Supreme Court, let alone get a job.

Let a Black man have tried that one.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg hadn’t even gotten cold before they dragged up a woman who is part of a cult who had almost no judicial experience and BAM, she is on the Court too.

So maybe the republicans hadn't counted on trump being as bad as he was.

Maybe.

But they knew he was incompetent and selfish and ignorant and perhaps criminal. They knew he didn't care about anybody but himself.

But because of their hellish agreement, thousands of people died from Covid.

Children were taken from their families and "lost" somewhere but we know they were probably sold into slavery or worse since then.

Millions wasted on a piece of crap wall that little kids were climbing before they were 6 years old.

I don't need to run down all the stuff he did or caused. You know it just like I do.

They knew he was wrong and should have been impeached and convicted but they kept quiet and still supported him. Twice.

January 6 happened and they still stand by him.

Why?

He’s got something on the republicans and they can’t back out now. They know he is dirty enough to do what he said he would and they are too weak to admit their duplicity and they have gone along with his every move.

What do you bet he told them you'd better stay with me or I will tell the American people about our deal and you all will go down. I'll destroy this whole damn thing if you don't support me no matter what.

It's too late to think any of them aren't complicit. We know the ones who have spoken up.

But the rest of them?

He went way too far and they know it, but they still don't have enough hair on their butts to be honest. It's all past them now.

Almost everyone in America has some form of PTSD. We’ve been through enough horrors in the past 5 years – things we never thought would happen.

We thought we were better than that.

We’re learning now that these people who are among us have dragged us down to their level. What did we do to let this happen?

How did it happen?

We look around and we are sick inside.

People that we loved and trusted have shown us a side of them that we didn’t believe existed. They look at us as if we were their enemies and they do unbelievable things and don’t seem to care.

They accuse us of being elitist and call us names and they get together in their “rallies,” and call for us to be killed. They threaten to kill us if we disagree with them. They hate us and treat us all like garbage and then whine when we speak up. They act amazed when we withdraw and refuse to engage with them.

Families have been ripped apart and friends don’t trust each other and some don’t even speak anymore.

We look at them and wonder what is wrong with them. How could they believe that stuff that any reasonable person would know is not true? How can they show so much disregard for other people?

What happened?

Don’t touch their guns.

They want their guns with no restrictions and they don’t care how many people die.

Black people tend to vote for Democrats so they want to make sure they can limit how many of us can vote. They openly admit it’s the only way they can win so we have to be ready to stop them.

Immigrants come here to have a better life just like their immigrant families did years ago. Why punish them?

Keep their uneducated hands away from books and they have absolutely no right to decide what schools can teach. They don’t even know what CRT is but they know they don’t want their kids to know that them or their parents helped lynch an innocent Black person.

Women are going to die because of them striking down Roe v. Wade. And they aren’t doing it for the children. That’s the lie they tell us.

They hate this multicultural world we live in and they fear they will lose their power position and they are willing to let millions die to keep their grip on the world.

We need to get together and stand up and let them know that it’s time to take our country and our lives back.

We need to support each other.

Black folks and Asians and Mexicans and Gay/Lesbian/Trans/Bi/Queer…white; all of us. We need to be there for each other. We need to help and love each other.

There are more of us.

These restrictive laws are harming us all. People will die because of them.

We need to ensure that everyone who can vote does vote. And we need to educate them on who supports us.

Confront these candidates and demand that they tell you where they stand and if they won’t be honest, don’t vote for them. If they say they support these laws, don’t vote for them. And then go tell others not to vote for them either.

We have to speak up and fight back or we will continue to be victims to their hateful agenda.

They got Roe v. Wade and now they have their eye on taking away birth control, any reproductive rights and the rights of gay people. They won’t stop. They think they have the power now.

Trump gave them what they wanted and he has got them over a barrel and not a one of them has the decency to tell the truth.

Why else do they blindly support him when they know he’s the worst thing that ever happened to this country?

 

You think I'm wrong?

Time will tell.

But I bet I'm right.

My Brother, Punkin

 

The Life of Eddie Thompson

I was 6 years old when he was born. I had the chickenpox and I was sitting in my room alone most of the time. Mom had gone to the hospital early – she had never been able to carry a baby full term and she had developed some issues that meant she wasn’t home.

Brian was only 2 and Daddy was working in Wisconsin, so Aunt Geneva came down from Detroit with a friend named Dorothy Gladden. I was glad they were there as they were both outgoing and funny and even though I had to stay away from everyone, they managed to make my exile bearable.

I remember when Daddy came in and told me that I had another little brother, and I wondered how long it would be before I got to see him. He was extra small, they said and he would have to stay in the hospital longer. Mama came home after a few days but my little brother didn’t.

But when he did! Wow.

He cried a lot. I mean, a lot. We all just sat and looked at each other while we heard him crying. Mama did what she could, but he just wasn’t happy. Daddy looked at him and said he looked like a little yellow monkey. But Dorothy was outraged and said no, he didn’t look like a monkey. He looked like a little “punkin” colored doll.

And so, he became Punkin.

That wasn’t the only issue. Mom had named him Bernard Joel Thompson. We all had BJT initials – Brenda Joyce, and Brian Jeffery. Dad wanted to know why he wasn’t named after him. Mom gave in and so he became Eddie Lee Thompson, III, even though Bernard was his name on his birth certificate.

But we all called him Punkin.

He was this cute little baby boy with the huge eyes who clung to Mom and shied away from most men. He cried when Daddy tried to hold him at first and he didn’t want Mom to go anywhere without him. It became a family joke that if she was leaving, he would pout and ask her where was she going and when would she come back. They called him her “husband.”

One day Brian and I were watching television when something whizzed past us. It wasn’t the cat. What was it? We looked at each other and then back at tv when it happened again.

It was Punkin, on his feet for the first time. He didn’t walk. He stood up, got on his toes and ran across the room, crashing into the wall. He picked himself up and ran back across the room. And he never stopped running.

Not long after that, we were reading and he was sitting with us like he wanted to read too. I asked him how he was doing and he uttered his first word.

“Volcano.”

Not Mama or Daddy. Volcano. He said it clearly.

Volcano.

You know a guy is going to be different when that is his first word.

Our grandparents came to visit us every summer. Mom’s sisters and brothers mostly lived in Florida except for Aunt Geneva and Uncle Richard in Detroit, Bootsie in Chicago and Uncle George in Washington, D.C.

All the rest were in Vero Beach and lived near Grandma and Grandpa. At the beginning of the summer, Papa would come to Chicago and pick up Mike and Keith. He would bring them to Galesburg, where we were living, and then take Brian and Punkin to Detroit. Everybody swapped kids for a while but since I was the only girl, I stayed home till Papa went home.

He spent time with all the boys, but he especially loved Mike and Punkin. He played with them all and they loved him.

After a few weeks, he would take me with him back to Vero and I would spend the summer there, visiting all my aunts and uncles and cousins. I knew when I was a little girl that I would want to live in Florida the rest of my life.

Brian and Eddie and I all loved to read. Mom had a friend who was a teacher and she had taught me to read before I went to kindergarten and I in turn taught Brian and Punkin how to read too. Mom bought a set of World Book Encyclopedias and the three of us fell upon them like hungry wolves.

We sat down and read them all cover to cover as if they were enthralling novels. Mom updated them each year and even though not a whole lot had changed, we still read them all. It was typical to hear one of us asking where the G book was or who had the second S book.

Those books made us who we are today – the devoted, curious, bookworms that love reading obsessively. It was one of the greatest things our parents ever did – besides moving us from Chicago to Galesburg.

Dad got a job there and it meant he wasn’t spending 2 weeks in Middleton, Wisconsin cooking at the Pines Steak House, and then spending 2 weeks at home. He went to work every afternoon and came home at night. It meant we went to better schools and we lived in better neighborhoods and it changed us for the better. We loved it.

I remember our childhood as being comprised of good food and laughter. We laughed a lot about a lot of things.

Punkin never liked biscuits. He especially didn’t like them if the bottom was hard. Dad got mad at him if he didn’t eat the whole biscuit. Sometimes he was able to get the dog to eat the part he didn’t like, but other times, he piled those bottoms on his plate and Dad was really mad at him for it.

He didn’t like vegetables much either back them. Neither did Brian. I ate them, but I was picky about so much, I feel guilty to this day. We gave them a lot to worry about.

Punkin and Brian were very close as little boys. Mike and Keith spent a lot of time with us and it was usually the 5 of us hanging out together. But the boys spent time on their bikes, riding all over town, getting into so much mischief that Mom had to change her work hours so that she was home when the boys got out of school. They were always getting into something and then coming home, looking innocent.

One time they were over at the stockyards when somebody got the bright idea to hit a cow in the butt with a slingshot. The poor thing screamed and then began to run. The other cows ran with her and they tore down the fence and before you knew it, dozens of panic stricken cows were running down the street.

Punkin and Brian were sitting at home at the dinner table eating dinner when Mom noted there were cows in front of the house. As we got up to see what was happening, we noticed that the trucks from the local tv stations were parked in front of our house and the police were running down the street trying to catch the cows.

The boys were just sitting there, looking innocent as madness ensued outside. They had no idea what had happened, they said. I knew better and after our parents had gone outside to see what was going on, I asked them.

Punkin told me what happened with a little smirk and I confessed I laughed. But I didn’t tell our parents. I was afraid they would blame the boys and I didn’t want to see them get in trouble.

Again.

Somewhere along the line, Punkin and I became really close. I think it was after Brian left to go to school in Mississippi because he went on to graduate in Florida and then he went into the Army. I was in and out – I went to New York for a while and I was running about with my friends, but Punkin and I spent a lot of time together talking about everything in the world and we never stopped.

Till last week.

He read my books and magazines about becoming a woman. He wanted to know how to treat women he said. He asked me questions. He figured to ask a girl was the best way to learn.

He was curious, engaging and smart. He listened and learned eagerly. He was tall and lean and he had long legs and a great big ‘fro and there were those eyes – huge and open and beautiful. He had the greatest eyes ever and it was such a tragedy that he had a couple of accidents that caused him to lose most of his vision early in life. He was attractive and girls noticed him but he had always been sort of shy and reticent and girls went for the guys who were more aggressive than he was.

He wanted to be a Marine but his vision kept him from getting in. He went to work and learned to enjoy his life as a young single man. He was into muscle cars and he had a ‘Cuda that he loved and a GTO. My brothers raced around in those cars and were the envy of a lot of other gear heads.

Just the other week, when we were coming home from one of his appointments, he and the driver struck up a discussion about muscle cars and Punkin lit up, telling him about the cars he had had and what kinds of engines they had and how he had worked on them to make them fast and powerful. He always loved cars.

He took to being a father like no one expected. He was young when Terrence was born, but he was a great father. He took that boy with him everywhere and spent time loving and teaching him.

We all loved Terrence from the moment he was born. He has those huge Thompson eyes and I was able to pick him out of a room full of newborns because of those eyes. No question that he was Eddie’s son. None at all. And now, he is every bit as amazing a man as his father was.

Eddie loved teaching. He was amazing with little children and he worked with kids nobody else even wanted to deal with. He knew how to communicate with them. He was open and giving and shared his own experiences and they loved him too. I remember seeing him take several little ones camping and I just shook my head. Who ever expected anyone who looked as cool as Punkin being so great with children? But he always was.

He loved his little girls.  I saw his eyes light up whenever he looked at Alaina after she was born. It tore his heart out when he didn’t get to spend time with her as he wanted. Same with Janae and Erica. Some men didn’t care much about being a father but Eddie always did. I used to joke and say he got the parenting gene that had obviously missed me.

I always had my own sense of style and I taught Eddie to have his as well. I told him not to pay any attention to what others thought or might have said about how he wanted to look. I told him to be himself and be proud. Some people made comments about how he dressed. He was always neat and coordinated. When we were in college, he met a guy who sold suits in his second-hand store. He loved the suits from the 40’s and 50’s and Eddie bought lots of them. He started wearing hats and he always looked elegant and sophisticated.

We both love Converse All Stars and he started collecting them in every color. He loved Hawaiian style shirts just as our Dad did. He always looked sharp. Some folks called him a pimp, and others said he should have dressed more like an older man, but he looked the way he wanted to look.

When we lived in Chicago, we used to go to the thrift store and we got great bargains all the time. I knew what he liked and I used to find something and run to him and he would smile and say, “Yeah, Sis, you know what I like.” We’d come home dragging several bags of goodies we had found. Our closets were running over!

We both went back to college later in life. He went to Southern Illinois University Carbondale and I went to the University of Miami. We both blossomed in the academic environment. We were meant to be teachers but we both thought we could make it in the business world only to realize later that academia is where we belonged.

He was a history buff and he loved philosophy. He loved having deep and intense discussions about things he was learning and some folks were intimidated while others were just bored to death. He didn’t read history books because he had to – he read them because he loved them. He was a true nerd.

He stumbled in college because he was math phobic. He tried several different ways to overcome his problem, but the sad truth is, he didn’t graduate because he didn’t get his degree. One course caused him to drop out of school. They wouldn’t work with him to pass that one course and over the years, he reached out and tried to get that done so he could get his degree and I am broken hearted to this day because he didn’t. It would have meant the world to him.

He loved jazz and Old School R&B and he was a great dancer. He loved dancing so much! I will never forget seeing him on the dancefloor having a great time. He loved music and he was constantly learning more about music as time passed.

It didn’t seem fair when Eddie got sick.

I saw it beginning when he got diagnosed with the glaucoma. We knew it ran in the family and we both got tested yearly but he missed a couple of years and then bang! He had developed a particularly aggressive and fast moving case. He had lost the vision in one of his eyes after a childhood accident and another incident later. And now, with the onset of the glaucoma, he lost a lot of the vision that he had left.

He had an accident in Arizona and he was recovering too slow. He knew something was wrong. I was living in Chicago and I knew we had great doctors there and I encouraged him to join me there. He did.

He drove there and parked that truck in the garage and never drove again.

He kept telling me that something was wrong with him and his doctor tried for a long time to try to figure it out. It wasn’t until she sent him to a cardiologist who then sent him to an oncologist that they figured out that he had multiple myeloma complicated with amyloidosis in his heart.

We then found out that he had a heart defect and it had been a stroke of luck that he hadn’t become a Marine because it would have killed him.

We began the treatment for his cancer and glaucoma and he endured procedures and surgeries that I don’t think I could have taken. He never complained. He did as the doctors instructed and came home and sat in the dark.

When he had trouble walking, we got a cane and he managed to jazz it up putting his keys on it. Some days he was too weak to move and when he had the stem cell transplant, he was in the hospital for nearly 2 months. He couldn’t eat and his hair and teeth fell out. He was suffering and I cried myself to sleep many nights worrying about him.

But on the days he had to get up and go, he did, carefully picking out his clothes and making sure he looked perfect. We took pictures of him and sent them out so that family wouldn’t worry. He was sick, but he always looked good.

We would often have to sit in the hospital atrium waiting for our ride and I noticed women walking by staring at him. I had said I was going to get a tee shirt made that said “I’m his sister,” so they would quit giving me dirty looks.

And then there was his cooking…..

He was a great chef. He learned from watching our father when he was a little boy. Dad made it look easy and so did Eddie. He just went in the kitchen and performed magic. Steaks, chops and fish…they were all perfect. He cooked shrimp fried rice and quesadillas and spaghetti.

But his barbecue was the best.

He had developed a 3-step formula. He made his own sauce, seasoning and basting solution. I probably harassed him about trying to get it patented and selling it for years. The rest of us fought for his sauce whenever he made it. I anticipate a battle for the last few bottles that are in his fridge now.

In Chicago, we met one of the guys in the 80’s soul group Slave. He was trying to get the guys back together again to start touring and he got them to Chicago and asked Eddie to cook a feast for them. We had ribs, a huge pork loin, brisket and sausage.

Eddie had this big old grill that had wheels that he had brought with him and he got busy cooking. That food was so good! Everyone was knocked out and we had a great time that day.

We then asked Eddie to start writing down his recipes so that we could put together a cookbook. He always said he had all his recipes “in his head.”

Yeah. They’re still there and here we all are….

When he got home from the hospital in 2013, we spent our Sunday nights looking at “Sunday Night Noir,” on Me-Tv on Sunday nights. They ran great old tv shows like “The Untouchables,” “Perry Mason,” “The Naked City,” “The Fugitive,” “Route 66,” “Peter Gunn,” “Mr. Lucky,” and “The Saint.”

Our parents had watched those shows when we were kids and we hadn’t gotten to see them because of their strict “8:30, asses in bed,” rule we had grown up with. We had to be in our rooms so that they could enjoy the rest of their evening without kids. We hadn’t realized how great those shows were until we got to sit down and look at them. We were usually up all night long on Sundays.

Eddie had long been talking about opening his own restaurant and we sat and spun ideas about what we would do. We didn’t have any money or a ghost of a chance to have any, but it kept him engaged and interested as we talked about it. I wanted him to have something to look forward to – something to live for – so I encouraged these discussions. We talked about what kind of restaurant we would have, the kinds of food we would serve, what the décor would be and all kinds of things. He was lit up when we talked about it so I kept it going.

The one thing he was able to do was cook so each day, he got up and prepared meals for us. He enjoyed the cooking and I surely enjoyed the food!

As long as he had something to keep him occupied, he didn’t worry much about the cancer. He knew he could beat it and he did.

He said the one thing he missed was riding a motorcycle. He wanted to be able to get out on the road one more time in his life. He had gotten sad and morose and depressed and he would often call me and tell me how lonely he was. This was after he had moved to Arizona and I was in Florida.

We had lived together for years and we had been through a lot but he had come through it all and was still standing. I wasn’t sure he should have been living alone, but he had grown to love it except he was alone more than he had expected.

I tried to get him to use a computer to reach out but he stubbornly refused any and all attempts to get him to learn to be more comfortable online. He was proud to be “Fred Flintstone,” he said until it became clear that his stubbornness had left him way behind the rest of the world. And he continued to resist to his dying day.

He did used to go online and look at motorcycles and cars for sale and he mentioned to me one day that he wanted to buy a motorcycle. He knew he might never ride it. His vision wasn’t that great and he said he knew there were a lot of accidents in Jacksonville. But he needed something to distract him; something to keep him busy and if he had a bike, he would putter around fixing it and making it run better.

It just so happened that one of our cousins shared his love for motorcycles and had just bought a new one and so he sold Eddie his old one. It was in pristine condition and Eddie was over the moon. They got the bike to Florida and suddenly, Eddie was going out and spending more time with his son. It just so happened that the bike was in Terrence’s garage and while he and Cassie weren’t happy about it, I knew that it was likely he would never ride it. But having it opened up the world for him and so I was glad he had it.

He was justifiably afraid that he might never get to ride his motorcycle, but he loved going online buying parts and getting his beloved “Sweet Sherry Blue,” up to snuff. He opened up again and went on dating sites and began to meet women. He started buying clothes that he would wear while riding and planned trips across the country. He began to live again.  

But life can be cruel and not long after he got Sherry, he started feeling weak and sick again. He was encouraged to go to the hospital again, but he had hated it so much during his cancer battle that he found every excuse not to go again no matter how hard I nagged and begged.

The pandemic was difficult for us all, but he was starting to feel sick again. We found out later that he had developed a blood clot in his heart and was also struggling with arrythmia.

He had fought off cancer, so he thought he could fight off anything. He would sit at home and suffer in silence, confounding us all. “No hospital,” he would stubbornly insist.

We talked about taking trips. He wanted to go to Paris and London, He wanted to go to Miami again and spend more time. He wanted to go to the Keys.

He had decided when he was young that he wanted to live in Florida and now that he did, he wanted to explore and see more places that he hadn’t visited when he was younger. We bought tour books and atlases and we talked about places we would go.

Once he felt better, we were going to either rent a car or take the bus and go to Vero Beach and visit family. After that, we would go on down to Ft. Lauderdale where we had spent a great week together years ago. Then we would go to Miami and I would show him around and then we would go on down to the Keys.

I ordered a tour guide of South Florida and I was going to bring it with me when I went back to Jacksonville this week. We would sit and talk about where we were going to go. We had a couple of my friends that we thought would be fun to hang out with on a trip like that. He smiled when he talked about that.

I tried to put his pain out of my mind and think about the things we would do later. But his language had changed. He always said, “….when I get better….”

But now he was saying, “….I don’t know if I can get over this….this is worse than the cancer….the pain is awful….”

I was afraid and I had never been afraid. The spectre of losing him was there and I didn’t want to acknowledge it. But it was there.

And now he is gone.

That beautiful, smart, loving, funny man that had been a part of my life for all my life was suddenly not there. The man who called me “Dear Heart,” and told me he loved me was gone. My brother that I shared secrets and jokes with, that I called and told him the news, that we wondered how the world got so broken and would be ever be able to trust people again.

I don’t know what my world will be like now. There is a huge gap.

We have suffered a great loss. All of us will flounder and miss him. We will second guess decisions and we will play conversations over and over in our minds. We will want to hear his voice and we will miss his smile. We will have to go on with this gaping hole in our world.

I will tell myself that he is with Mom and Dad, and that he will walk down the street and see Uncle David and Uncle Albert and that he and Uncle Peter will laugh again. He will see Hamp and Thomas and P.J. and Stevie and Stephanie and Grandma and Grandpa. He will hang out with his beloved Bitsy.

And he will ride his motorcycle and be free of pain and worry.

And we will love and miss this man who filled our world with love and joy.

Goodbye Punkin. And Godspeed. We love you more than you will ever know.