Big Daddy

Big Daddy was special to all of us. So special to me that I intend to adopt his title when I attain his family position. But before I focus on my sentiment, let me first state briefly how I think he was special to others in the family.

First, of course, he was special to Granny. I mean, she was his first child and as fair-minded as he was, the apple of his eye. From what I could see, she could do no wrong, and she reciprocated. She adored him, as she should have.

Then also, Papa came to honor him. No doubt, he was Papa's substitute father (Papa lost his father at the age of 10, and Big Daddy just adopted him into the family when he met Mom, six or seven years later). I know Papa looked to Big Daddy for advice, counsel and encouragement, and that Big Daddy supplied it all in abundance. He loved Papa like a natural son, and Papa also reciprocated.

To Middle, Youngest and me, he was our only Grandfather. We sat in his lap, shared his coffee at 5 a.m. and watched him doze off at the First Baptist 11 o'clock service. I saw him take care of Arthur and Sudie and sweet talk all the older widows who were aching for some appropriate masculine attention. He even took all the grand kids to the zoo when we got in Grandmother's hair, and graciously hosted Papa's mother in his home on special occasions, making her feel special, even though she and Grandmother did not always see eye-to-eye.

Overall, regardless the object of his attention, he was the consumate tease, always with a twinkle in his eye, whether it was when he made our more stoic Grandmother giggle by asking "Whacha got behind the door Mildred" (Grandmother hid her famous cake behind the door in the kichen) or in quizzing me on my current girlfriend (like any self respecting teenager, I most certainly did not want to talk about my girlfriend to anyone). When we were younger, he tickled us until we begged for mercy and gave us "CoColas" from the patio closet saying "this is between you and me, don't tell your Grandmother."

For these reasons, I always felt close to Big Daddy. He made everyone around him feel accepted and loved. He was a family peacemaker. He was fun, and in my mind's eye, he stood ten feet tall. His benevolence was exceeded only by his personal affection for his famly, and I felt special in his presence.

These memories of Big Daddy, however, are the memories of a child and an adolescent, and I do wish I had known him as an adult; man-to-man; peer to peer. He was one to emulate. He died as I entered adulthood. At a time when I was testing the water, spreading my wings and making mistakes. He died in the fall of 1973 when I was in college at the University of Texas (a chapter of my life worthy of its own post), and in the months before his passing, I knew he was sick, but did not know he was in a life threatening condition until very close to the end. His death was the first among our close family members, so even when he was admitted to the hospital and endured a short surgery, I still believed (in fact, knew) that he was immortal, like the rest of us and assumed he would just "get better."

When I learned he was likely to die, I didn't know what to do or how to feel. The idea of death was foreign, so final. No one I had known had died except for the brother of a friend who died in high school in a car wreck. I couldn't imagine Big Daddy passing. He was an institution. He was the status quo. He was a presumption. He was the one who told Granny when she announced her engagement to Papa, "If I'd known you wanted a ring, I'd have bought you one." He was the man who talked with us over Mars radio from Mississippi to Morocco ("I love you, Over."). He was the man who rushed to make the 12 hour drive from Jackson to Charleston when we returned from France, and then cried when he left, only to return within an hour to say he wanted to stay "just a bit longer" (his return made our day an made him even more of a family institution). For these reasons, the idea of his imminate passing in the fall of 1973 simply wasn't real to me.

I did ask if I could visit him in the hospital. Granny urged me to stay at school. She said that my education was of paramount importance, and that Big Daddy "would get suspicious about his condition if everyone starts to visit." (He never asked, and no one ever told him he was terminal--but on reflection, he must have known).

Anyway, I don't harbor any resentment; everyone was just doing what they thought right at the time, and my visit probably would have been more for me than him, anyway. Granny and her sister were there. Grandmother was by his side. Those were the people he needed. They loved him and took care of him to the end. I would have been someone for whom he would have kept "a stiff upper lip." He lost nothing by my absence, though I'm sure I lost a great deal. I think I would have grown some if I had seen him then, there at the threshhold of my adulthood. Even if he had no specifc advice to pass on to me encapsulating the wisdom he accumulated in his life, I think it would have benefitted me to be with him at that time.

Anyway, I flew into Jackson one day and out the next so I could "miss as little class as possible." That was the reasoning of my parents, but if they had known of the undisciplined class schedule I observed, they would have not been so concerned with protecting it. When I saw him at the funeral it was hard to recognize him. I was put off by the funeral industry anyway, and while his was an attempt to honor his life, it was a little morbid, as they all are. His casket was open. He apppeared thinner than I remembered, undoubtedly because of the illness that robbed him of life. He was not wearing his silver, Truman-era glasses that were his signature, and I had never seen him without them, and these changes made him difficult to recognize. The words spoken and the hymns sung were meant to be inspiring, but to me it was all a hazy dream. He was gone. I knew what I had been taught, he was in Heaven, but how, why, what happened, why wasn't he spared? These were all questions racing in my mind as I returned to Austin.

In the end, as I was told later, Big Daddy knew he would not survive the illness. A little while before he died, the doctors performed surgery to remove something, and when opened they him up, saw the extent of the disease that took his life, and closed immediately. When he returned to the room and awakened, he knew he had not been in surgery long enough to remove whatever, so even though he never discussed it with anyone, he had to know something was wrong). It was at that point that he instructed Granny to remove from the pantry a bottle of whiskey he had obtained to kill some of the pain he suffered (he was not a drinking man of any consequence, though I most certainly never knew him to be a legalist of any kind). He told Granny he did not want his grandchildren to see the whiskey and assume it was something he endorsed.

During his last days Granny talked with him about spiritual things, and he confirmed his faith to her. She took comfort in those discussions, and even though he "rested his eyes" in church and had little patience for legalisms of the times, I expect he embraced saving faith in a way that we understand to be effective.