6. A letter to my kids about their grandpa

Note: While this post is addressed to my kids, the simple truth of the matter is I wish everyone had a chance to meet my dad. …so I’m posting it here.

Dear Chloe and Logan,

You never got a chance to meet your grandfather. I’ll never not be sad about that cold and unchangeable fact. I’ve been reluctant to talk about him with y’all for a whole variety of reasons, the first of which being that his death has just made me incredibly sad and it’s often not easy to trade the comfortability or stability of any given moment for something that makes us sad. While I’ve always believed that it’s okay to be sad and to live in whatever emotion you’re having at any given time, it’s another thing altogether to willingly invite it into your life. Make no mistake about it; it is good to do that, and if you don’t sometimes let that sadness in, that emotion will manifest in unexpected and unintended ways, but it is something most people are more reluctant to willingly do.

And while I’ve processed a ton of my grieving about my dad, every time I think about how much I miss him or how much I wanted y’all to know him, it feels like the side of my brain that handles that grief is held together with duct tape instead of reinforced steel. So I sometimes feel like I need to proceed with caution.

While I had no control in him not being here, I should have been more willing to invite him into your lives with conversations, remembrances, and via other means, even if doing so meant opening old grief wounds and facing something I sometimes don’t think I’ve fully accepted. So that’s what I’m hoping to do here with this post written to the both of you. I’d like to take a moment to tell you more about your grandfather.

Your grandfather, James (Jim) Joseph McKibben was born on May 14, 1947 in Denver, Colorado to Ed and Mary Ellen McKibben (my grandparents, your great grandparents) and was one of 6 kids; my Uncles Eddie, John, Jerry, and Kevin and my Aunt Kathleen. His family network in Colorado was pretty large with your great grandma being one of nine kids and each of her siblings having numerous kids (your grandpa’s cousins) of varying ages. There are Mulqueens and McKibbens all over this great country of ours. And as my grandpa and uncle liked to joke, having both served overseas in the Navy, likely many McKibbens all over the world, too. I’m sure they were just being a little crass and that was said in jest, but I dared never to ask a follow up question.

My dad’s grandpa owned a hamburger stand and general store in Golden, Colorado (not far from Denver). When you’re in a family that large and that connected to its deep Irish and Scottish (*cough cough* Catholic) roots, the oldest siblings and cousins look after the younger kids and siblings.

That’s the family environment your grandfather was born into. The actual environment environment he was born into was of a postwar country on the verge of rapid suburban expansion. The country stretched from coast to coast. The cities of America were large and busting at the seams. The two world changing world wars that had dominated the first half of the 20th century had been fought and won. They call them Baby Boomers because that’s exactly what happened; everyone was having babies and moving into what was once the countryside but was now a growing suburbs. My dad was born into all of that and would often tell me about how great it was to be a child with the majestic eastern Rocky Mountains to your back and the rolling “fruited plains” (America the Beautiful was written not far from where your grandpa grew up) to your front.

My dad’s recounting of his childhood sounded very much like a Norman Rockwell painting by way of The Andy Griffith Show (a popular show of the time about a small town called Mayberry) with a touch of Rebel Without a Cause or American Graffiti rebelliousness thrown in for good measure. I’m sure the actual truth of what it was like to grow up then is a lot more fuzzy than the rose colored glasses of nostalgia would have you believe, but I do think that there was something pretty magical about being a child in the late 40s and 50s.

My dad was a masterful storyteller and used to tell me and my siblings all kinds of fun stories about what it was like to grow up in 1950s Denver. Some of my favorites were:

• Upon the conclusion of a large family gathering at one of the great Rocky Mountain State parks, everyone in the family got into one of several cars that transported them out there, except for (I think) my Uncle Kevin. When you’re in a family that big and maybe a little worn out from a day hiking around the Rockies, you’re not exactly operating at peak mental capabilities and might just assume “well if he’s not in this car, he’s surely in one of the other ones.” Nope. He was stranded out there for as long as it took to get home, figure out the mistake, and then drive back (at best, probably 2 hours). Cellphones were a half century away from being invented. Maybe there was a park ranger who you could call, but how does one get that number in 1955 America? When they got back, luckily no bears had gotten him and he was exactly where they had left him, albeit a little agitated and probably a lot scared.
• After spending a Saturday watching drag races at a local racetrack, one of my uncles decided he wanted to tie a large cloth napkin to his bike, to see if it could slow him down the way the parachutes at the drag race slowed down drag racing cars. All of the other siblings watched intently from the front living room window as, predictably, the napkin didn’t provide much resistance to his bike. He ran smack dab into a neighbor’s mailbox at top biking speed, sending both the mailbox and my uncle (and his face specifically) flying off into several directions.
• There were countless other “minor” stories that my dad would tell where, if you were to believe my dad or any of my uncles, they’d kind of low-key terrorize their neighborhood. There’s nothing too bad, but they’d do stuff like throw a dummy off one of their neighbor’s houses to scare them or would shoot loud fireworks off both into the sky and then at each other. So many stories I wish I could remember, and in which my dad always talked about chronicling, but have now been lost to time.

After new job opportunities opened in North Texas, my dad’s family moved from Golden, Colorado to Dallas, Texas in the early 1960s. Moving to not only a new city but a new state right before you start high school is an incredibly difficult thing to do and I think your grandfather always partially resented the move. My family used to vacation a lot in Colorado and looking back on all of those trips, it’s pretty evident that Colorado was homebase for him. He may have made his home in Dallas and then Houston, but Colorado was where his heart always remained.

At one point, your grandfather considered becoming a priest and almost pursued doing so. I think his interests in drinking and women kept him from fully going down that road, but it was William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist (the novel, not the movie) that fully sealed his decision to not go to seminary. While it’s somewhat funny to think that that a book about the devil scared him straight (…or that my siblings and I owe our existence to said book), the truth of the matter is that The Exorcist is less about Regan and the devil’s possession of her, and more about a priest struggling with his faith and self-doubt, something my dad wrestled with for the entirety of his life. I could probably write pages and pages about my dad’s faith, but the man was one of the most intensely spiritual people I’ve ever met, even if that spirituality didn’t manifest in regular church attendance or in conventional ideas about the nature of God and the universe. I miss many things about your grandfather, but talking about spirituality ranks way high on the list.

Much of the wild stories between my dad, my uncles, and my grandparents seem to have evaporated during the late 60s and 70s and I largely suspect alcohol is the reason why. While the stories dried up a bit, it seems as if my dad and uncles hadn’t. Every picture I’ve seen of them in that era, they’re all holding Coors cans (they were from Golden, Colorado after all) or Dr Pepper cans (they were living in North Texas, after all) and were all cosplaying as either Creedence Clearwater Revival band members or as Burt Reynolds (they were living the 70s after all). That was also the decade where my dad and uncles all met their first wives and me and my cousins were born. Women who knowingly marry into this family deserve sainthood.

Between 1972 and 1979, your Aunt MaryAnn, your Aunt Katie, myself, and your Uncle Luke were born in Houston, Texas. We lived in a big-to-us but comfy two-story house in West University (near Rice University). It was kind of the standard 1970s suburban household. My sisters had their own rooms, but my brother and I shared a converted attic space as our bedroom. My mom was largely a stay-at-home mom, but the changing national economic landscape made that more difficult to sustain. My dad was a salesman with Brown & Bigelow, a large marketing company that sold printed items to larger companies around the state and country. Being a very personable and warm person, my dad was a natural salesman.

Your grandpa was a highly introspective and thoughtful person, as well as a person who wrestled with issues of shame, control, and even a little physical abuse (the line between “discipline” and “abuse” was as thin as a stick when he was growing up). He was also a very loving and generous person. And it was with all of those aforementioned traits (both good and bad) that he decided in late 1975 and early 1976 to stop drinking. …forever. Alcoholism is something that his whole family wrestled with in pretty profound and unhealthy ways, probably for centuries, passing down all kinds of psychological and genetric traits that made dulling the senses all the more enviable. But as they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, sometimes you just “get sick and tired of being sick and tired” and that’s when his life began anew.

Your grandpa got heavily involved in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) in the immediate aftermath of stopping drinking and remained heavily involved with that group for the rest of his life, serving as a sponsor (someone alcoholics can call when they’re feeling tempted to drink or are feeling low — among other things), someone who would attend meetings (weekly meetings where recovering alcoholics would congregate, discuss the AA program, etc.), and would tell his story (some meetings would have a designated speaker where a recovering alcoholic would tell their “story” — basically their history with alcohol — to those in attendance). Your grandpa’s talent at storytelling had a new, higher purpose. By the time I came around, your grandfather was clean and sober many years over, but recovering alcoholics carry many of the effects of their alcoholism for the rest of their lives and truly end up living life “one day at a time.” I’m eternally grateful to have met the recovering alcoholic Jim instead of the one that existed before. Eternally grateful…

Growing up in Houston in the late 70s and early 80s was really pretty magnificent. At least it was for my siblings and me. We’d spend our days playing in waterhoses out front, watching my sisters play softball (which my dad coached), and general kids “stuff” of that time like watching too much television. Favorite activities were going to Showbiz Pizza (basically a proto-Chuck E Cheese BUT 1000 TIMES BETTER), going to the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo, going to Astros games at the Astrodome (basically, the first domed stadium and like every other ballpark BUT 1000 TIMES BETTER), and getting burnt to a crisp at AstroWorld (basically like 6 Flags BUT 1000 TIMES BETTER). Houston in that era really was a “mood” or a vibe. Everyone, and I do mean everyone, had a pair of boots, a big belt buckle, and a big ‘ol hat, and about 75% of the men had mustaches. When I say “mustaches,” I don’t mean the ironic hipster kind people have today but just flat out Dad ‘staches. It’s just what folks did then.

Some of my fondest memories of this era involved my dad:

• At one of my sisters’ softball games, I wandered off and was prompted by a couple of older kids (I was probably 5 at the time) to touch an electric fence. SPOILER ALERT: touching an electric fence is not pleasant. I must have blacked out or erased whatever happened next from my memories, but I do remember, later that night, being visited by a real life fireman who came by in his actual firetruck (which is pretty mindblowing to a 5 year old kid). Over the next few days, weeks, and months, my dad would say that touching the electric fence gave me super powers and dubbed me Electric Man, even going so far as to draw a lightning bolt on my chest with his ballpoint pen.
• Sometimes memories are less a single memory and more of an amalgam of several memories… I have such a strong memory of playing out in the front yard with my cars as my dad watered his freshly mowed grass while listening to Milo Hamilton call an Astros game. Baseball on the radio can have a real poetic beauty to it, both in prose and in pace. It’s not all go-go-go like basketball or smash-mouth-in-your-face like football. But baseball radio is perfectly suited for the pace of watering grass while your kids play in the yard. That memory is my idea of heaven.
• My dad taught me to ride a bike by holding on to the seat and running with me while I pedaled. Time after time I’d freak myself out and he’d patiently just say “let’s try again.” Soon enough, I was pedaling hard enough and was looking straight ahead well enough that I hadn’t even noticed he had let go and I was doing that all on my own. If a better metaphor for parenting exists, I don’t know of one.

Life got really tricky in 1985 when my parents divorced. Since this is more of a letter and not a 100 page biography, I’m going to stop this one here for now. I’ll pick this back up down the road, for sure, but I did want to take this moment to kind of give you a glimpse into your grandfather’s life, at least the first half of it. There’s so much more to tell…

Your grandfather would have loved you guys so much. And while I worried above about how this post would make me feel as I wrote it, I’m glad I did this. It’s way past the time where you guys get to know him and know how great of a man he was. This post doesn’t even begin to really scratch the surface of who he was, what he meant to me and my family, and what life has been like without him, but this is the best I can do. If he were here, he’d tell me “it’s enough.”

Love,

Your Dad