Thursday's Thoughts

• Through a website that lists thousands of headstones in Texas I saw my dad's headstone for the first time in a long time. It was weird to see the hand of someone I don't even know holding back the weeds to take a picture.
• I also saw the headstone of someone I know to be dead with the date of death still blank.
• It also led me to a census from 1930, it listed the father of my best friend as 12 years old at the time. He killed himself in his sixties (I believe that's right) by shooting himself in the head in his front yard. I remember being pulled out of class to be with him after his dad died.
• The same boy came and picked me up from school when my dad died.
• I had an uncle who after my grandfather died if someone put flowers on his grave he would pull them out and throw them over the fence.
• He's dead now.
• My favorite grandfather was actually a step grandfather. He was known as a simpleton around his town and got by doing odd jobs. He loved us kids and we loved him back and were fiercely defensive of him. His name was Paul and that is what the older people called him. I always said Pa and thought that was what he was being called by everyone.
• He walked a lot and would pick up little discarded toys and all kinds of junk (I remember several calibers of bullets) and would put them in a shoe box and give them to us when we came to see him.
• He called them play pretties.
• They lived in a tar paper shack.
• I wonder about the nature of graveyards. It seems they inevitably become overgrown as families age and die off. Often a highway or reservoir comes and covers them and they aren't always relocated. The person isn't there, they are gone forever but, I guess it is a good way to feel connected if it's available for future generations to visit.
• I'm going to take my kids out this weekend and tend to my families graves.
• I wonder how many people will come to my funeral?
• The rumor was at my dads funeral there were several women who didn't belong to the family and weren't friends of the family who carried on and acted way upset for people unknown to the family.
• Supposedly, there were also a lot of phone numbers of women in his wallet.
• I like that kind of stuff in a sly, dark kind of way.
• My dad died in 1979.
• It seems like it could have been yesterday. It seems like it could have been a hundred years ago.