Just Wanted to Learn

  My uncle had gone through the car. I just stood and watched.

  My sister’s necklace was never found. The only thing taken out of the car was her book bag with drops of blood on it. We took it back to my mom.

  My mom had another necklace made for the funeral.

  The day of the funeral arrangements helped play a role on how I view my dad. My Grandma Selby showed up at the funeral home as well. My dad’s sister was there and my mom.

  This whole situation had changed my views about a few people. It changed my views on how I looked at life.

  I had been in the funeral home once before. It was the same one that my step grandfather had his funeral at. He was the only grandpa that I had known.

  I went in with everyone at first. My dad had been drinking and was outside crying. Before they started making the arrangements, my grandma told me to go outside and take care of my dad. I did what I was told.

  I sat outside with my dad. He smelled like alcohol while he cried. He wasn’t trying to see how I was doing. I wanted to go home.

  I didn’t know what to do. I was a confused fifteen-year old boy who had just lost a sister. Why did I have to make my dad feel better?

  Later on that night, I had gotten an idea for a poem. I was never a poet, but I tried. The poem wasn’t good.

  I did what I could not to think about things. I searched for things that would just grab my attention like the guitar.

  The viewing and the funeral was a blur. I was just going through the motions. There was a good amount of people at both.

  I tried to spend a lot of time outside. Nobody cared that I was only fifteen and smoking cigarettes.

  At the funeral my stepdad’s daughter had read the poem that I wrote. Two of my sister’s friends sang a song.

  The people coming up at the end got to me. I’ve never been a people person. Looking at that many people in the eyes gave me a headache. The thing I remember most was at the graveyard.

  Her grave was to be by my great uncle and grandpa. At a graveyard that my aunt and uncle had taken care of for years.

  Someone had thought that it would be a good idea for my brother and I to be pall bearers. I always wondered whose idea it was. That is not something that you can forget.

  I about fell apart when I put my hands on the casket and I knew my brother was too. I was scared that I was going to trip. The hearse seemed a long way from the grave.

  My brother and I stood in front with one on each side. We carried our sister to her final resting place. That is a memory we will carry till someone carries us to our final place.

  Then there was another line of people to deal with.

  I had spent some time with a girl I had known. We had taken a walk around town. That’s when I realized I was becoming different.

  When we had first met I was still a good kid, then I changed. My mom and her mom were friends. They were church people.

  She was the first girl that I thought that I was in love with. I felt embarrassed to even tell her how I spent my time. She wasn’t the type of girl you could impress by telling her you get high.

  The rest of the night I had spent alone in the room. I did what I could not to think about things. I got high and listened to music. Then did what I could to get some sleep.

  Things had quieted down for my family. Things didn’t get back to normal. How could things go back to normal? Things just got to where we all did our own things to go on.

  My mom had a heart shaped tombstone put up. She had a picture of my sister painted for it. Then she had the poem that I wrote engraved on the back.

  It is a place I don’t like to visit. I did go there unless my mom really wanted me to. I tried to avoid thinking about it at all cost.

  Lee and I started to rebel some. We weren’t dealing with things in the best of ways. Our mom would ground us, but we would still leave the house.

  We weren’t trying to make things worse for her. We just didn’t know how to deal with it ourselves.

  It was hard to talk to our mom about things. I didn’t know how to talk to my mom before my sister’s death and know it seemed impossible.

  Our dad was pointless to talk to if he wasn’t sober. A person couldn’t find him sober unless he was just waking up. Sometimes not even then depending on how much he had to drink the night before.

  I spent a lot of time by myself after that. I had spent some time with my brother and his friends. I just wanted to get high and not think about things.

  My brother and I both knew this kid name Ted. We also knew Ted’s older brother Mike. I had talked to Mike one night after the funeral.

  Mike was good with working with wood. I had gotten an idea about one of the guitars that I had.

  I wanted him to take the garage sale guitar and sand down the top. I wanted a picture of my sister put onto the guitar. Then have it refinished.

  We talked about it for two hours. It was a good idea that never even gotten started.

  I would like to say that things had gotten better, but they didn’t. I had started getting trouble in school as soon as I went back.

  I was out of school for a week because of my sister’s accident. I was a little upset that my brother had gotten to stay home, but I had to go back to school.

  There were other things that I was upset about. The girl who was driving the car had gone to court over the accident. She didn’t even lose her license. I guess I was also upset that she walked out of the accident and my sister didn’t.

  My brother’s friend Josh had told me something about a kid who I had seen at the funeral. It was a kid that I didn’t like at all. Josh had said that the kid was making jokes at the funeral.

  I just wanted to let some anger out. I had never believed too many things that Josh had said. It didn’t matter if he was lying to me or not.

  At lunch I walked out and found the kid. Ted was following me with a group of kids. That wasn’t what I wanted.

  I followed the kid to his car. I was already yelling at him. He wouldn’t stop and he got into his car.

  I started kicking the rear fender and then door. Ted was helping kick in the car. Then I had jumped onto the hood and started kicking at the windshield.

  The whole time that we were kicking the car, the kid was inside trying to get it started. It was an old piece of crap and it didn’t want to start for him.

  I jumped off the hood and started kicking at the passenger window. Then he finally got his car started.

  He swerved out into the road and about hit a truck. I went back into the school building.

  It wasn’t much later that I had got called down to the assistant principal’s office. There was a city cop sitting in his office.

  The kid had called the cops and they had come to talk to me. I told them what had happened.

  They said that they weren’t going to press charges. The cop actually said that the damages were more than what the old piece of crap was worth. The car wasn’t worth fixing up before it was even damaged.

  My dad had said that he would fix the boy’s car. He never did though.

  I had started having dreams with my sister in them. They were all about her still being alive. The dreams messed with my head.

  The dreams started off simple. I would just see her. She would just be sitting on the couch.

  One of the dreams she had walked into the house and sat down on the couch. She said her death was actually a trick for her to hide from my dad. My mom was even there.

  That dream had made me get up and go around the house looking for her. It was like constantly getting reminded that she wasn’t coming back.

  I couldn’t talk to anyone about my dreams. I couldn’t put that on my mom. The dreams had to be my secret and I didn’t know how to deal with them.

  There were nights that I didn’t want to shut off my lights and close my eyes. I started to lose sleep.

  The frustration and anger k
ept building up. I didn’t even know how I felt because I didn’t what I could not to feel anything.

  I wasn’t letting out my feelings about everything. I wasn’t talking to family and friends about what was building up inside of me.

  One night when I was in my bedroom I just snapped over nothing. I picked up the garage sale guitar and threw it on the floor. Then I started stomping on it. I flipped it over and took a ball bat to the other side.

  I had felt a little better, but couldn’t believe what I had done.

  There was one thing that did stay the same. I had kept trying to play. I kept trying to learn and even that was getting frustrating.

  I wanted my dad to teach me, but I knew that he wouldn’t. I couldn’t understand why he refused to teach me how to play.

  There would be times when I wouldn’t play for awhile. When I would pick it back up, I would get frustrated again. I would end up in the same spot as always.

  Christmas of that year I had gotten another reason to keep playing. I couldn’t wait to try and learn something new. I had gotten a new guitar.

  My mom had let me pick one out of a magazine. It was a black acoustic with white trim. I had gotten a hard shell case to go with it.

  It was a nice guitar. I loved that fact that it was mine. It wasn’t my dad’s or Brian’s, or some garage sale guitar, it was brand new and it was mine.

  The guitar sounded good and didn’t hurt my fingers. It didn’t take long to get used to playing it. I had to use my fingers to strum it. I still wasn’t used to using a guitar pick.

  I didn’t mind playing on my own at the moment. My new guitar needed to be broken in. I couldn’t wait to show it off to my dad, but I knew my mom wouldn’t be too happy about it.

  Chapter Eleven

  In March of 94 I was still a freshman in high school. School was alright, but I didn’t want to be there. Someone had put the poem that I wrote for my sister in the yearbook.

  My brother and I couldn’t take being in the same room anymore. At first I was to go into my sister’s old room, but then my brother got it. I was kind of glad that he did. When I was staying my sister’s old room, I used to play guitar quietly in the dark.

  My dad was still playing with Nick and the band. I didn’t talk to my dad that much. I didn’t even know that the band was still together till I found out that they were supposed to play.

  They were playing at the fairgrounds across the road from where we were living. I just had to go through the back yard and over the tracks, and then across the road.

  It was a benefit show. There was a list of other bands that were playing.

  I went over to watch the band, but my brother didn’t. He had gone out with his friends. He didn’t really want to be around my dad.

  This was the second time I watched my dad play in a band. The crowd was a lot bigger. They were the band to start off the show.

  The band did well. They only did a fifteen minute set. I didn’t get into it like I had before. There was just too much stuff going on in my life.

  My dad and Nick were supposed to an acoustic thing next, but I didn’t stay for that. The band had played a new song that I liked and I tried to remember the chords.

  I had gone home and picked up the guitar. I did my best to remember the chords that they had played. I played all night till I got the sound right.

  Easter of that year I didn’t go out to my Grandma Selby’s house like I usually did. My grandma’s house was the place for every holiday.

  Everyone in the family was to be there. Family that nobody had seen all year would show up for the holidays.

  I wanted to go out with my brother and his friends. I wanted to spend the day getting high. I didn’t want to be around family that probably wouldn’t have talked to anyways. I just would have missed all the good food.

  My brother made me call and make an excuse for the both of us. I wasn’t good at telling lies. I did tell her that I loved her.

  I went back to school after Easter. I was in second period English when I had gotten called down to the office. My grandma had died.

  I was taking out to my grandma’s house. That was where my dad was staying.

  I was just my dad and I at first. We didn’t talk much. I just messed around on his guitar.

  Nick and his wife had come over. I had gone over to their house for awhile. I learned the song Amazing Grace while I was there.

  They took me back and my dad was drinking. I went home to my mom’s house. I spent time alone in my bedroom.

  My Grandma Selby’s funeral was the second time that I had played in front of a crowd. I stood up with Nick and his wife. Nick and I played guitar while his wife sung.

  That was also the day that I got to carry a loved one to their final resting place for the second time. They had wanted the grandkids to be pall bearers.

  I had gone to my grandma’s house after the funeral. They had the family dinner there.

  I didn’t talk to anyone. I went to the room that my dad had been staying in.

  I sat in there listening to music and playing on the guitar. I really didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to talk to anyone.

  It all just added to the anger and frustration that had already been building.

  Harold Selby and Nick had stopped playing music together. My dad owed Nick a lot of money. I didn’t see Nick and his wife anymore after that.

  My grandma’s house was sold and my dad moved away. That’s when I stopped seeing most of my dad’s side of the family. It was like they had stopped caring about Lee, my sister, and me.

  My dad moved in with a lady that he had been seeing. I had only met the lady a couple of times. It was over an hour away. He didn’t come up to see us. We didn’t know if it was because he couldn’t afford to or if he just didn’t want to.

  My brother, Josh, and I had gone down to see him one day. My dad wasn’t acting right that day. We kept asking about our grandma’s dog. He said she dead of a broken hurt. Lee said that he probably got rid of here. We did go with him to a bar that he was going to be playing at.

  My attention was on the new stuff that my dad had bought. He had gotten some money from my grandma’s house being sold and had bought a one man set up. He had gotten a new amp/pa with a new microphone, and then a real nice acoustic guitar.

  We were only able to listen to a few songs. My brother always made him play the same two songs. He bugged my dad till he played them.

  My dad didn’t sound bad on his new equipment. I wasn’t worried about what songs he was playing. I just wanted to try out his new equipment.

  We were in a rough bar on the outskirts of a big city. We had to leave before the night crowd came in. My dad didn’t appear to want us there.

  We had spent more time on the road than we did with my dad. Lee never told me how he had felt about it. I believe that he was starting to build up some resentment towards my dad.

  Chapter Twelve

  I never gave up on learning how to play guitar. I was still at a point where I needed to learn more, but couldn’t figure out how to teach myself.

  I did have what I would call two real guitar lessons. Someone had put an ad in the paper that they were giving guitar lessons. My mom had paid ten dollars per lesson.

  The guy was giving out lessons out of his apartment. His apartment was in a house across the street from the high school.

  He was skinny with long hair. He was an eighties to early nineties rocker.

  He had only taught me some basic lead scales. He wasn’t interested in what I had already known. The second session was just going over what he taught me the first time.

  I wasn’t interested in what he was teaching me. It seemed like the same stuff that I had seen in my books and magazines.

  I didn’t like how he was teaching me. I always considered myself as a fast learner and he was teaching too slowly.

  He seemed to be a showoff guita
rist. A showoff guitarist always learns the best part of a song or the part that everyone knows when they hear it.

  I didn’t go back after the second lesson. It seemed like a waste of my mom’s money.

  I just kept trying to learn on my own. I played my guitar every day.

  I even tried to write songs. I would break up with girls write sappy love songs. I always thought that I was just so heartbroken and that it made for great songs. They weren’t great songs.

  When you write something that you think is great, put it up for a while. If you can pull it back out and look at it without wondering what you were thinking when you wrote it, then you might have something great.

  I did hang out with this woman for awhile named Lori. She was older and I had known her because she used to hang out with my cousins.

  She was married and had three kids. I don’t know way I choose to hang out with her. I guess I just needed a friend. She didn’t let me smoke weed around her.

  Trish’s husband had played guitar but gave it up. He still had his white BC Rich Warlock guitar with amp stack. I had taken my dad over one day to see it.

  My dad didn’t sound bad at all playing it. Trish’s husband didn’t want to sell it.

  Trish had liked to write poetry. She was better at putting words together than I was. She gave three of them to me. I had talked her into letting me try and turn them into songs.

  They were good poems. I didn’t do the best turning them into songs. One of them sounded out alright, but was still missing something and I could never figure out what.

  We just spent time hanging out with other people. I started hanging out with a guy named Mike who I had already known him and his family. I had gone with him when he got his new guitar.

  All that didn’t last long. They were all older than me. I didn’t really fit in with all of them.

  I still kept trying to stay out of the house a little more. When I was home, all I did was stay in my bedroom.

  I eventually got my license and stayed out of the house a little more. I wish I could say did creative things with my time, but I can’t.

  I started hanging out with a kid named Chuck. We spent a lot of time just cruising country roads. I would smoke some weed and he would drink his beer.