Let It Rain

Through the past week and a half I have gone through some very emotional moments. 2 murders, and the realization that I had not told my son about the murder of a bruther. I had received a tribute video, and was quietly watching it the other day, and Andre walked in. I had tried to stifle my tears. He had seen them, he quickly looked at the video, and said,’ hey, Uncle Mark, someone made a video of him’, and then the picture hit, the picture of me and 5 other men carrying his coffin, and his wife and his oldest son walking along side it, his now  10  year old son consoling his mother.  He then looked at me with tears in his eyes, and  said, ‘he’s dead dad isn’t he, he’s in the box.’  ‘yeah, Bubba, he is.’, I replied.  I watched as my sons eyes welled up, as he realized that the man he had known as ‘Uncle Mark’ was gone.

I hadn’t known how to tell him at the time it happened.  I remember  Mark making such a deal over Bubba and Mark Jr., that they were so close to each other in age, and so were Mark and I. We had sat and talked about so many things, hopes and dreams for our sons. What we were gonna do for father/son outings, how we were gonna all go fishing and then when our sons had sons we were going to sit on a porch as old men and laugh about how crazy we were back in the day and how far we had come. We had even decided on where us and our families were gonna build cabins, Cody, Wyoming, well just outside of there.  Then when we got old and grey we would get senile and feud like the Hatfield’s and McCoy’s, all the while our ol’ ladies and kids were trying to convince us that we really liked each other and we were just mad as hatters  and that was the only thing that was causing us to fight.

We had talked privately about the madness that our lives had become, and how we would have changed things. We talked about our crazy lives, the dealings with the Johnny law, the feds, and everybody and their mother’s who just didn’t like us very much due us being the men we were. I remember  the last conversation I had with him, I had told him what was going on in my life, how it was just happening, how the things that we had always talked about, I had told him that I was going to make a big change in my life, I had expected him to say some type of expletive and hang up, he didn’t. He said, ‘no matter what, I am always gonna be your bruther, if I hate you, who am I gonna take fishing with my boy, I can’t take just Bubba, so I guess we better stay bruthers.’ That was the last time I talked to him.

Just over a week later he was walking out of a bar, he was on his way home, probably couldn’t wait to see his son. Junior is a rough and tumble kinda kid so he and Bubba always got along like 2 peas in a pod. Great kid raised by a great dad and mom. As he left the bar, he was about 2 steps  from his bike, when someone called to him. As he turned to see who it was, 3 shots rang out, very shortly after that, my bruther Mark died, in the street, next to his bike, looking at a picture of his wife and kids, and asking the other bruthers around him to, ‘just watch out for them.’

I guess I never mourned him, or a lot of them, we all knew the life that we led usually ended too quickly. We were used to it, live fast, die young, leave a good looking corpse, that was our saying.  Hopefully you have enough set aside for your ol’ lady and the kids to keep ‘em  rollin’ for a while. There were some times in the early 90’s where I lost count of the amounts of funerals.

                This week there were 2 murders of people I was aquainted with, one was shot, and the other, she was beaten to death with a bat. In the reflection of those, I have been overwhelmed with so much emotion, and in that, this profound understanding and healing. It’s hard to explain right now, I think I just had to type this out to just express myself for now.

                If there is one thing that I can think is most poignant of this. We live in a day where we don’t know which day is going to be our last. So in that all we can do is remember that yesterday is history, and tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift and that is why it is called the present.

                I love each and every one of you and God does too. LLLAKYFOTPA