So Brenda got him some habaneros to go with a second plate of homemade cornbread and beans, and Mama’s food had flavor back then, so even a skinny guy like Paw Paw went for plate two. At least it went over better than that time we went down to Atlanta and Maw Maw or Leah one, must’ve been one of the twin girls, because which ever one of you it was, you didn’t thaw the chicken first, and it came out of the oven cold and raw!
Well, Paw Paw sat there with tears welling up in his yes. He’d poured the juice on his cornbread, too- I don’t recall if they had greens but that goes well so let’s throw them in. He keeps on eating and eating and tears stream down his cheeks as he keeps putting it away.
“You like it?” Mama asked. “It’s goooood,” he said, wiping the sweat off his forehead.
I honestly can’t remember anyone Paw Paw didn’t love. So that story’s my gift to Roger. I’m sure his soul found his Mom and Dad first thing. He knows so much more now, and y’all, he’s not in pain, and that was his profound wish to God, to not hurt all the time anymore. It amplifies loneliness and depression. Your life becomes about finding a way out of that pain.
So if you have tears to shed, think not of what was meant to be as some wrong done to the world. Roger was Love, and Love never dies, and he will always be with you.
My first impression was how nice he was to us, how happy and carefree he was. His fourteen was half my parents’ ages, and he was bursting with teen energy. He couldn’t wait for a walk every day. He also showed us how to stay fit! Any conditioning I did as a boy, which wasn’t enough, was inspired by Roger. He also liked to say things that were wise and give advice, didn’t he? I mean, more than anyone else I knew. I guess he watched a lot of Kung Fu, the tv series.
But what I learned from him includes, not having kids, but being very good with children. He was truly gifted at interacting with kids. He kept the spirit of Fun alive until he couldn’t find the heartbeats to do it anymore. If that made you feel a skip yourself, just dedicate a few heartbeats of fun to our Uncle Roger.
I never knew anyone who loved citrus more, but God especially lemons. It sucks that salt is no good in high regular doses, but he could eat a lemon like an orange.
He probably wasn’t cut out for drinking, which I did try to get through to him, ages ago, but he was always on the search for something cool and fun. I knew him when the world was his oyster, working for Bonnell, making good money down in Franklin, GA. See, there was a time, when life was kicking Cecil around a bit, and Roger invited his big brother to come stay with him long enough to get settled into a new place. He had the first beaded curtain I ever saw, between the kitchen and living room. There was this big ass velvet painting of the Devil. I LOVED it! He had a board game, not Monopoly but something about money, and Deb and I had a grand time playing it together. I think we roped some of the others into it. Dad was not yet adjusted to his family man potential- he was a very brooding fellow at the time, when Bekaert played out and we were bankrupt- but Roger showed me that it is OK for a man to show warm regard and love and be open with his feelings. That may well be the single greatest gift Roger Homer Disharoon had.
The summer I spent in Newnan seemed to come so quickly. I was super-sad we were leaving Roger’s after only a couple or days or so, because of course I wanted to live with him, forever. He was probably eager to resume dating at full swing, so things worked out for us all. Newnan was only one summer, but it was one to remember, and Roger even came to visit. That’s the one where we hit the peach stand, and he gave me three lifelong loves: long walks, good talks, and yellow peaches.
Years later, he gave me my first karate lessons, going over the basics and the code of honor and everything. He tried to be the very coolest, because he was fed by the power of your belief and mine. We believed Roger was awesome, and he cultivated it. He was the freest human being I knew, growing up, you see, so I couldn’t be the same without him then.
I don’t think anyone could know what would happen when a free spirit became head of a household of his recently-orphaned niece and nephews, but he was great at cooking and cleaning his place, always was. Do you think I’d have wanted to live with him always if it was a dump? He always cared for his homes. He lived for the fairer sex, his family, and his own very unique walk with God.
I hope they’re having a peach, as we speak. Amen.
You better believe, he and Toby had a big surprise for me by the side of the house when I was 18. He laughed a year later and told me of the motivation behind those long walks, which explained why they took so long- to get to a place where no one would see him- and that’s why he always had cologne, and probably now I understand how a kid got to have such mind-blowing talks with Uncle.
Let’s just say it ain’t any wonder I ended up in Boulder! For the values roger had in the years he most formed me, I can say my new city is a kind of Shangri La of many people who have those same far-out ideals and Peace and Love. Now how I stay here after finding out Unc and the company I worked for died at the same time is still an unfolding mystery. But I’m not miserable.
Moving from city to city like Roger used to? Moving even once every eight years, like Anj and I manage? Such things are actually very hard to do well, ‘cause you know how impossible it’s become to just pick up and live somewhere else nowadays. Some people stay in their same community a very long time, and I see some stability in that. Lora used it to knock a home run with her own child-rearing. I know our family’s been through tough years, but there’s been a lot of love and honest efforts made. Don’t ever give up hope. We’ve been taken far away and high up a mountain side. We were born to keep climbing, but never forget the many people whose love took us so far across the wilderness to this point.
Roger’s playground of the 1970s and 80s is just memories now, but I picture his Heaven being a bit like that. He’s got his hair back, and his mustache, he’s ready to go like it’s Saturday afternoon.
It’s just, now, our ever-restless Roger is at peace. And no more toothaches. Man, those just killed him when he’d get’em.
It’s funny, because I formed my heroism of Roger in the days he was most footloose and fancy -free, and some of you, when he was a stable part of your household, doing his part to keep the commune happy. But he’s gone because there was nowhere left to belong, and no more distractions from the pain and loneliness, and even a guy who always tried to stay in good shape has to have a reason to Live. He wasn’t really made for the reflections of old age, but don’t think he hadn’t lived a full internal life here. He never meant to get old, but rather to live life to the fullest.
The pain of our family is an old one. Cousin Fred died recently, but he lived in California and Georgia both, Georgia in the fall. Fred asked me about Roger, wanted to know his story. It’s the last conversation he and I ever had. Who was he?
All Fred knew was, when Paw Paw was a teenager, he and his two brothers and dad went over to his uncle’s drunk as skunks for not the first, but last, time. If they couldn’t get sober, Paw Paw's uncle told them, don’t bother coming back. And those sides of the family never spoke again that I know of in this life.
You might
think no one will remember you or no one appreciates you, as if you were never a thought to anyone. But someone’s asking about you. Someone wants to know your story. You’re part of a family.
Families are a way to endure, and families are a way we go on.
Young me took in a lot of vocabulary from Uncle Roger. “That’s a trip!” Classic. “Not today, heh-heh!” The guy who stole cassettes out of cars at work at Magic Wand for Christmas gifts one year also had a sneaky side, but so many of his scam ideas were so bad. The problem was, I thought, people dumb enough to fall for that didn’t have money, but I have really revised myself on that proposition.
Money and brains don’t always have the relationship you’d assume, does it? Anj and I used to listen to his proposals on ways we could all get rich pretty quickly, and I still had no idea how much you can get away with, especially these days if you do it online. But we’d laugh and say, ‘with Roger, you can see the man moving behind the curtain.” But what he knew from experience was, people are a lot dumber than I think. What I know from experience now is, Uncle Roger kinda was right about that at the time.
He made sure I loved classic rock, played 96 Rock and Z-93 down at the gas station where he worked for Maw Maw and Paw Paw. He loved that whole album by Boston. I sat reading Iron Man comics I’d bought for a dime each, from 1973, ‘74, yellowing junk that inspired me to make bad drawings. I’d read and write and draw down at the gas station while John Bigham worked on tillers and Roger changed tires, or, nothing at all, just sitting there with two fans going. For lunch, we’d get ham and cheeses from Brenda’s Place, Mom and Dad’s short order joint down the street. Look around the world, and you see I had it really good.
I could even go play my crazy pretend behind the service station, where no one could see me, bringing to life what I hadn’t enough skill to draw, thinking carefully how to make my ripoffs of Marvel characters, original. I was a real loner until late in high school, but those were the years some of us shared out in Shannon, on Todd Road by the old Model school, where Mama and my aunt Linda attended about ten years and graduated.
The smell of cigarettes and velvet paintings and pro wrestling and hot dogs on white sandwich bread. It’s all this time for me. It was the beginning of the Atlanta clan migrating to Rome, Shannon, Summerville.
I don’t have a lot of money, especially not after last Thursday, heh, but I have made a lifetime of memories. I hope today I’ve brought a sense to some of you, that Home is a place you carry inside. Maybe you set it up in other places, but while you seem to leave it, it never leaves you.
That whole class of people who never leave their hometown? I don’t quite know why, but for some reason, that is not the Disharoon Way. Most of us decide to pick up and ramble elsewhere. How do you think Fred ended up in San Diego, California? And how did I meet him? Well, not the way you would figure, but that begins a story of another funeral. And this one is about Roger Disharoon. Not what he needs, for the Universe has seen to that.
This is about our need for him. But I hope you see, in God’s plan, however diabolical it sometimes seems, he served our need. He served God to make a heart that moved throughout the whole of Irene and Cecil’s family. He was probably the most universally-beloved of us all, by us all. He connected us all.
We’re like Roger, can’t sit still without biting our nails if we aren’t stimulated by where we are. We’ve never been interested in just fitting in with everyone else, even though we all try to make our own sanctuaries. If no one else comes, there’s always Jesus. But we all believe, we love, and deserve love, and we are people passionate about Life. You have to understand. If you have no passion for tomorrow, then the Disharoon inside you has already died.
Let me tell you something, and if you knew Roger back when, you know just what I mean. When he lived out in West Rome, I used to visit him often. He’d take me over to visit Obie sometimes, but usually we’d hang there at the house. I think one of the first times Angela ever came over with me, and we were engaged six weeks so it was a narrow window of time, Roger gave us his martial arts demonstration.Roger Homer Disharoon. Not one time I saw you did you fail to tell me “I love you, lil C.” You were the most charming and charismatic person I had encountered in my sheltered existence, but you were so much more, too, the Baby Sitter for Life that went with your whole Teenager for Life motif.
He didn’t have a workout partner most of the time, but he had perfected his system of fast, high kicks and chops. Roger whirled around that little bitty living room without touching a thing, swift like the wind, light as a feather. It was the most graceful thing I ever saw in a living room.
Well, congratulations. The way you wanted me to always think of you, has come true. To me, this is who you’ll be.
Let me tell y’all, I woke up Friday too early and it was afternoon so good luck just shutting my eyes to rest up. I was finally feeling shitty about the sad story of Roger’s end and my career teaching kids from my home and anything, but his part really troubled me, thinking of his unhappiness. I drove back from the grocery store, unhappy with the world now that we’d all fished with and ate with and walked with and hugged and watched tv with Roger all we ever would.
And I didn’t want to cry, because that would mess up my head inside and be all snotty. Besides, he’s in golden lands, and free of pain, and the only sorrow is for those who believe they can no longer be with him.
But I talked to Angie about it a minute, and thought of this time he was troubled, sitting by me on the couch. I recalled putting my hand on his shoulder, to say: “It’s gonna be allright, man.” And as I told her and put out my hand, I had the vivid sensation of touching his troubled shoulder, as though he were indeed at my side. And she helped me realize, if yes, there he was, then if he is sad, it is because he wants to be remembered. He wants to be felt. He wants still to be a part of love never-ending.
So would you do that? Would you take his example of cheer and optimism with you, and feel him with you when you most think of his absence? He would never have wanted you to be so sad, you know. If God can give Roger anything he wants, right now, he only wants to be remembered. Remember, he did stand for something, even if he was forever in conflict between wisdom and foolishness. That is what makes the human race sometimes great. He’s forever part of your life and mine. God bless Roger Homer Disharoon, born the day after Christmas in 1960, died August 6th. What a very good job you did at spreading your spirit. It is with us always. -Little Cecil
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