The only person in my husband Funk’s family who really-really likes me is his father Chet.
Since I’m a whore for a compliment, and since I get attached to anyone who really-really likes me, not to mention gushes over me, Chet became one of my favorite people in the world.
In the early 80s, after 35 years of marriage, Chet’s wife up and divorced him. This occurred shortly after he was forced to retire because of Meniere’s disease. My father-in-law was pretty devastated by the unexpected break-up, as was my husband. I can still picture Funk standing in our kitchen taking that call.
Chet came from a Viking background, and stood 6’7” tall. For a man in his later 60s, he was strikingly handsome. He lived in the sticks of West Virginia, so word of his new singledom sounded like a bell tolling all throughout the hills and valleys. Women lined up at his doorstep, offering all sorts of things to entice him into marrying them. The most clean-cut of those temptations was someone who showed up with a sixpack of beer.
Chet quickly forgot his heartache.
That said, he was stupefied when he reported that one bright, shiny day he found himself soaking in his bathtub with a woman drinking those beers. The visual still makes me cringe.
Soon, he met Shirley. She was a real player. Offered way more incentives in getting Chet to hitch up than any of the others who came knocking with alcohol and baked goods. Within three months of dating, Chet married for the second time. A few short months later, he sold his beloved home on Whiskey Run and moved to Florida where Shirley had her heart set on living.
Since my parents had relocated to the state as well, after our yearly visit to see them, me, Funk, and our children would drive across Florida and visit Chet. My father-in-law fell in love with the hot southern climate. To keep busy, he began carving and writing his autobiography. No small thing given his 40-year stint as a foreman in chemical factory. Come to find, Chet was a skilled carver and writer. Who knew!
Within a few years, Shirley showed her true colors in the most unpleasing ways. This is when I renamed her Shirley-You-Jest.
After my father-in-law got nice and comfy with the woman, she spent his monthly pension on whatever she wanted while Chet walked around with holes in his tee shirt. To go unnoticed, she got Funk’s family out of the way, going so far as to keep us from talking with him by phone.
After a few years, Shirley decided she wanted half of Chet’s pension and no Chet, and Chet divorced a second time.
Bewildered once more, he showed up on our door stoop in Kansas City and we took him in. We had just moved to Missouri and didn’t know a soul. I was thrilled to have my father-in-law living with me, complimenting my every move and my children absolutely loved having their grandpa around.
A side benefit of having Chet living with us is that he couldn’t just be retired.
He had to be working on a project. After Chet moved in, every item on Funk’s honey-do list was immediately knocked out by his father. What joy for a young mom! To show my gratitude, after each task Chet completed, I’d buy him a carton of Lucky Strikes and a box of pinwheel cookies. Upon receiving those “gifts” you would’ve thought I’d given him a 5-pound gold bar.
Chet was just as happy as I was by our new arrangement.
Besides his carpentry skills, the man was intensely interesting and very affectionate—all originating from his super large personality. At dinnertime, he told the funniest stories of growing up in his family and not so funny war stories. My son was sick a lot when he was little and would rarely go to anyone but me, yet around our dining room table each night, he frequently sat on Chet’s lap to better hear those tales.
Unfortunately, Chet grew lonely for female company his own age.
I was desperate to keep him living with us, so I placed a “looking for a companion” ad in the local newspaper. Although I was only seeking a friend for my father-in-law—someone to go to dinner and a movie with—turns out, the classified ad-space was a precursor to the dating apps of today.
I was inundated with calls from prospective new brides.
Chet hooked up with Betty, the first woman who showed up at our home. I couldn’t imagine what my father-in-law saw in her character much less her looks. Her face was so full of wrinkles, that if you stretched it out, it would’ve been a 2-foot wide circle. But Chet was of an era where men felt they needed looking after by a woman, so I guess him hooking up again so soon was completely understandable.
If you can even believe it, Rubber-Face-Betty was even worse than Shirley-You-Jest.
They married within a few months. After which, Chet’s latest bride moved him in with her and her three girls in god-awful rural Missouri, or Bible-Belt-Misery, which is what you’d call it if you happen to swing by there after reading this story.
Like Shirley-You-Jest, Rubber Face also kept us away from my father-in-law and we didn’t hear much from him for the next 10 years.
Part of that was our fault. Funk and I were busy young parents who barely had time for ourselves, what with all our focus centered on our children. Just when I realized we were playing right into wife number 3’s hands, Chet became very ill with emphysema, and of course, Rubber Face suddenly became Mrs. Nice Christian Lady.
She contacted Funk on the pretense of, “It’s been a long time, why don’t you come visit?” But what she really wanted was help taking care of Chet and paying his medical bills, which were minimal given he was a vet. Of course, we were happy to have my father-in-law back in our lives so we did what it took to make him comfortable. Visiting him in his hospital bed was the first time any of us knew that he had lifelong PTSD from World War II. The doctor said that when Chet was asleep, he was suffering disturbing flashbacks. This explained Chet’s violent nature when my husband was a young boy, and likely the break up with wife number one.
We had a good six months with my beloved father-in-law before he passed.
When Betty phoned Funk to say that his father had died, just before hanging up, she asked if she could borrow one of Funk’s suits.
Borrow a suit?
Yes, to bury Funk’s father in.
This was followed by more phone calls asking to borrow a shirt, and another for a tie. It appeared Betty didn’t want to spend another dime of her husband’s remaining 50% monthly pension—Shirley-You-Jest having the other 50% —or, more specifically, she didn’t want to spend anything on her now dead husband.
Chet was the first person in our family to die.
I felt orphaned. Soon, the conversations with Funk became very strange. Whenever he walked into the same room as me, I’d look up at him and say, “Funk, your dad is dead.”
After a few days of this, Funk, with an incredulous look on his face, said, “I know he’s dead, why do you keep telling me this?”
“It’s just so weird. I can’t stop thinking about it. Aren’t you thinking about it all the time?”
“Only when you remind me.”
I could see my train of thought unnerved my husband, so I had to stop, but this tells you how stunned I was that my father-in-law had passed.
I mailed Funk’s suit to the funeral parlor for his father to be buried in, filling the interior pockets with love notes from our family. That suit has likely become the longest borrow in the history of mankind.
On the day of the service, we drove to rural Misery where Funk was to give his father’s eulogy. I walked into the viewing room where Chet was laid out, but thought there’d been some kind of mistake given I didn’t recognize the man in the casket. But nope, the funeral director said to get back in that room because that was indeed my 6’7” father-in-law lying in the coffin.
Pinching pennies, Rubber Face had ordered a short casket.
Chet looked like a little old Jewish man laid out in there, not the giant Viking he was. I couldn’t help but wonder what the mortician had done to Chet’s legs to get them to fit inside the casket. I winced thinking of the possible scenarios of broken bones angled at Chet’s sides.
Since Funk’s father had fought at Normandy, I arranged a 21-gun send off, after which, my family hightailed it back home because Funk had to teach that night at his moonlighting job 50 miles from our home, and we were already 143 miles further out from there.
I tried telling Funk that his father had died, that the University would understand if he canceled class. But nothing doing with my goody-two-shoes husband. He was fine! And dammit, he was teaching his class! He had an obligation to his students!
When Funk digs in like this, there’s no digging him out. He’s quite annoying that way. But knowing this about my husband, I asked him to at least lay down in the third row of the van and rest while I drove our family home.
It was dead winter, and it started flurrying shortly after we set out. And not too much longer after that, the flurries turned into a full-out blizzard. I shouted back to where Funk was resting that there was no way his class would not be cancelled. He shouted back in an irritated tone, saying KU had never once in its history cancelled a class, and then told me to not only keep driving, but to pick up the pace.
No way. I had children in the car.
Given the now white-out conditions, there were wrecks on the highway every 5-10 miles. Whenever Funk started drifting off he’d be startled awake upon hearing yet another vehicle careening into a ditch with a thud.
Halfway home, my children were grumpy from hunger, so everyone but Funk—who was finally asleep—piled out of the van at a McDonalds to grab dinner to go.
With food in hand, I hurried the kids back into the van so I could get Funk to his class on time. Pulling out of the parking lot and onto the snow-covered road, my son started screaming, “Mom, WTF are you doing?!”
“My God, Andrew, what the hell!”
It seems that while the kids and I were waiting in line to order, Funk had gotten out of the van to use the restroom.
My son was so distraught that I’d abandoned his father, he wanted me to tell Funk I hadn’t forgotten him at some cheap fast food joint—mere hours after we buried his father. Instead, he wanted me to say I was just being thoughtful over Funk’s loss by turning the van around in a blinding storm so I could retrieve him from the front door. But I can never lie. And there was no use even trying to explain. I just let my husband assume I was choosing a really crappy time to play around, as usual.
Funk was not happy.
He opened the sliding door and crawled back into the third row. As he did, I tried not to look at his lower lip that always protrudes a mile past his face whenever he’s upset but trying not to say anything. And I certainly didn’t tell him what a dumb-F-move that was to not let anyone know he’d left the vehicle. I just put the van in gear and got back in the long line of cars and trucks that were crawling to their destination in a record-breaking storm.
Many hours later, I pulled into our driveway. Funk ran into the house, grabbed his briefcase and raced back out door to drive the 50 miles to teach his class in Kansas. When he arrived, the room was pitch black. But there was a nice note posted to the door saying classes were cancelled.
Here’s to you! if you also get sad when loved ones die. I’ve been told I have a “hard time with death.” A stunning statement, because in my world, it’s normal to grieve the loss of people you love well. Indeed, it would be difficult not to grieve everything my father-in-law was. In fact, the only reason you’re reading this essay is because Chet loved my Christmas newsletters so much that he encouraged me to become a writer. My husband? Has many of his father’s qualities, including viewing the world differently than others, but perhaps not as much as me. Funk still periodically asks why I left him at McDonalds the afternoon we buried his father. The answer is always the same, “Jesus, Funk. Who looks in the last row of a 3-row van before getting back on the highway? Most people would’ve let someone know they were going inside to take a leak.” And always after that exchange, there comes that bottom lip again, protruding into the next state.
The Photo. Funk and his dad in their younger years, Chet cradling his carton of Lucky Strikes.