The WHS Pimp is on family leave in CA after losing his “Pops” the week of the Corporate Manager’s Meeting. He was in the middle of a shit-storm of flight delays, and missed connections when the word came through from home…stranding him alone in an airport bar, halfway between here and there, with what would end up as something like a 1 am final arrival in Florida.
…Pops had been sick for quite some time, but the plan had been to divert the return ticket after the meeting and see him in person, say the things a son says when they are facing that moment, and come home with at least some semblance of a closure. Instead, WHS Pimp tossed back about a fifth of gin amongst strangers, got on another flight hours later, and was deposited to a three-day orgy-fest of unnecessary political game-playing…which he somehow managed to live through, even in his emotionally fucked-up state, with more grace and self-respect than the yahoos conducting the whole enterprise.
Any other person would have waved a giant finger of “fuck you” to the Corporate heads back at the airport, and changed destinations right then and there…I sure as hell know I would…but the WHS Pimp didn’t. And not only that, he failed to even tell us back home that any of it had happened, until two days into the Conference.
And it sucks.
…It sucks he missed the face-to-face goodbye. It sucks that his Pops was so young to begin with, and that life-choices can handicap a person so severely that sometimes you just can’t find a way out. It sucks that The Pimp was alone when he heard it…that no one was there to get the top bottle off the shelf, put it in front of him and say, “Tell me some stuff about your Pops…I know there’s a million awesome stories…”
…And it sucks that even when he got home, we were all too damn poor to front a bottle, set up a wicked feast, and wake the man a proper way.
…All we COULD do, was take over the biz, and shove him out the door to California, to be with the people who COULD do all that for and with him. So we did. And he’s there. And is reporting back with pics of long-ago friends he hasn’t seen in years, and sister time, and mornings with Mom by the pool, and general shenanigans that you need to have to survive the kind of shit-storm that is “death.”
It’s good for him to be home…has been too many years since he’s been. We all wish it was under better circumstances (obviously), but I happen to know first-hand that sometimes the only thing to bring you together is the loss of something great. It’s a stupid law of life, but there it is.
So, from here we wish him well, and lots of stories, and “remember whens,” and laughs, and building more good memories to bring back… helping counter the hard ones that first sent him there.
…And we also would like to say, for the record: “STOP CHECKING YOUR FUCKING WORK EMAILS…ALL THAT SHIT CAN WAIT!”
Love and stuff,
~D
