Born to my consciousness around 1983, in a Victorian home in Washington, IL, George left this life April 17, 2019.
At that time he smelled of cigarettes, and Old Spice, and his mint gum. The gum, kept handily in the left front pocket of his shirt, had a squirt of mint liquid in the center. My annual 12 hour ride to his home consisted of hoping he wouldn’t make me wait too long before offering.
There are photos of us sleeping on the quintessential farmy couch - a 6 4 giant of a man - and me a baby.
He sometimes traveled with us, and always reminded me - a too skinny, funny-looking, lonely little girl - that I was HIS girl. He loaded my momma up with so much ice cream during her pregnancy that her doctor had to order her to stop.
Long before being born to my consciousness, he was in the army, a master carpenter, a drunk, and abusive.
He had the kind of smarts that allowed him to graduate fourth in his army class of 64, without ever opening a book. He had no time for carpenters who cut corners. His work is his pride, and the pride of the family.
He once built a gazebo on a barge that was 18 inches off level. When the barge was dried out, that small house was true to plumb.
At the time of his birth into my consciousness, he lived gently, obscurely, and quietly. I took comfort in his large presence and knew nothing of the man before this one until my teenage years.
He faded from view over the last ten years. No longer could sneak a drive and the cigarettes he’d “quit.” No longer could rise out of his chair to escape into the world outside. Always in the the room with the family, but largely in the background. Now, the fade has become death.
I want him memorialized as the man born to me, as the man born again, made new by the second generation - the first generation to meet him as he could have been.
