![]() ![]() 15, 1940, in Sylva, N.C., and spent his early years moving around the country - and, briefly, to Mexico - with a “tunnel superintendent” father, whose many public-works projects included the Hoover Dam. ![]() ![]() He didn’t feel the need to talk about it.Įdward Earls was born on Dec. He hadn’t mentioned his smoking-cessation plan to anyone. More than 30 years into my parents’ marriage, it was only well after the fact that Mom noticed he’d quit smoking, after decades of him puffing on cigarettes and then cigars, leaving the slow-smoldering nubs to burn out balanced on whatever ledge he could find outside whatever building he was about to enter. He was his own man, and he kept much of that man to himself. He was generous with his time and money, and had no expectations of quid pro quo or acknowledgment. I hadn’t realized there were loose ends, a void heading into the void.ĭad wasn’t secretive but he was taciturn, the kind of person who’d honestly answer all your questions but rarely volunteered the words that would lead to revelatory asks - unless, of course, it was regarding practical matters (yes, my tires are rotated, oil changed, and taxes done). A vein in his throat pulsed out of time with the monitors. His meringue of sugar-white hair, lips chapped and tongue raw from the oxygen mask, neck so vulnerable and pale. I looked at my sleeping father - this superhuman who’d swooped in to save me more times than I could count, from crises that paled in comparison to the one for which he now could offer no succor. I returned to the awful reality of the hospital room, the mechanical gasps, whirrs and chirps if anxiety has a soundtrack, this is it. The man who’d called Dad’s cell that day last summer, one of many people who reached out during that time, whose names only occasionally rang a bell, hung up. ![]()
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