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.
