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.