It seems a lot of my most beloved relatives have passed away in February, most notably my revered great aunt Lidia Mincey and my two oldest siblings. I spent the end of February in nostalgic reflection. The week just passed had some dates of special significance to me.
February 24, 2022 my father would have turned 108. Two days later, February 26, 2022 marked the 40th anniversary to the day of his death.
I remember the night before Dad’s death. It was on a Thursday. Dad died at my sister Ruby’s house in Knoxville. It seemed practically the entire Mincey clan and Preacher Oliver Wolfenbarger was present for the overnight deathwatch. Cigarette smoke hung heavily in the air—from about waist-up the air was tinged in a hazy blue fog. I always think of that night when I smell cigarettes. I remember my niece Kathy wandering from room to room with a blanket, trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable place to sleep.
I remember the Friday morning of Dad’s death. He lingered as if afraid to let go of the only existence he had known, though his body had become a diseased, dilapidated shell of a prison that harbored his soul. I remember my brother-in-law Buford sitting in a kitchen chair at the head of Dad’s deathbed, the same hospital bed in which Dad’s saintly mother had died 22 years earlier. Buford leaned on Dad’s pillow, watching intently Dad’s final moments of mortality. I thought nothing of it then, as I also have a somewhat morbid fascination with death and all things funereal.
How could any of us have known at the time that within thirteen months of Dad’s death a car accident would claim Kathy and Buford would fall victim to suicide?
Dad was 51 when I was born. I was his final child, the only issue from his second marriage. Dad predicted that he would not live to see me graduate high school, and he was right. I was sixteen when he died, but a factor other than age helped his prophecy come true.
Dad was an alcoholic for a great portion of his life. Additionally, he suffered from acid reflux, a curse I also inherited. In my case, acid reflux has left me with a pre-cancerous condition known as Barrett’s esophagus. In Dad’s case, several years of smoking and alcoholism undoubtedly aggravated his acid reflux and led to his initial diagnosis of cancer of the larynx around Christmastime 1979. Dad never had another peaceful moment on this earth after that fatal diagnosis.
My father was a complex man. When sober, he was serious as a judge. Children should be seen and not heard, and this was somewhat difficult for me, a young inquirer who always had questions for anyone and everyone about everything. Children of alcoholics learn to adjust to the expectations of their addicted parents. Unfortunately, for many this comes in the form of abuse.
Not in my case, thankfully. My father only whipped me once, with a blue yardstick whose remainder I still have in the umbrella tree of my home library. I deserved the whipping, and it was an effective though painful means that gained my father my fearful but awesome respect for the remainder of his life. I made sure no other discipline to my backside was necessary from my dad.
Dad left me examples from both his sober and serious sides to emulate. From the sober side I learned that there was nothing wrong with borrowing money if needed, though it was shameful not to repay the loan. I learned that oftentimes little needs to be said, and honesty is always best, even when you’re caught “red handed” in the wrong. I learned from my father that there is nothing wrong with being humble, though humble people can become resentful of those who “get above their raisin’.” In Dad’s case, this applied in particular to anyone in his family who would dare have a better quality of life than their parents.
I also learned from Dad that bad life choices leave regrets. I remember once when Dad’s grandson (my nephew Keith) from Cincinnati visited. At the supper table, Dad was in a melancholic mood (alcoholics are often melancholic when sober). He expressed regret about how he had treated his first wife, an obviously fine woman who loved him dearly in spite of his weaknesses and bore him nine children before her death at age 33.
I learned most of the resulting lessons from Dad’s alcoholism when he was coming out of a drunk. More than once he told me, “Don’t ever do what I’ve done.” If he was referring to being an alcoholic, for whatever reason I have never been attracted to intoxicating beverages, so that advice was easy to take.
Dad was able to overcome one of his addictions. He suffered a stroke in his mid-fifties. Possibly as a result, cigarettes began to make him sick whenever he would attempt to smoke. Unfortunately, no matter how sick Dad would be from a hangover, he was unable to conquer alcoholism until the very last few years of life. There has always been debate as to whether alcoholism is a disease. In Dad’s case, in the pre-Prohibition days of Dad’s childhood, alcohol was readily available, homemade from the corn and other crops grown in rural Grainger and Union Counties. Neighbors and relatives boundlessly produced and happily exchanged “homebrew” and other intoxicating fluids, sometimes using them to pay for farm labor or exchange of food and merchandise in the absence of cash money. Such availability often led to many young men (even sometimes women) to become alcoholics at an early age, undoubtedly a reason that churches were so opposed to its manufacture and use. The Baptist Church Covenant to this day contains the phrase, “to abstain from the sale of, and use of intoxicating drinks as a beverage . . .”
I would readily agree that alcoholism is an addiction. I would also speculate that every person has addictions of some kind. Some, like book collecting, can be rather inexpensive and harmless. Others, like hoarding, can become a hazard. Many times Dad, when in the throes of a bad hangover, would verbally resolve that “this is the last time.” There were times when Dad abstained for days, weeks, months, even attending church during his abstinence. But his addiction always haunted him, and he would again succumb. I don’t remember exactly when Dad drank his last alcohol, but I know he was drinking heavily within the last ten of his 68 years of life.
Today, February 28, 2022, marks exactly forty years since my father’s funeral and burial on a Sunday. Dad was lovingly borne to the grave by E. J. Ailor and his mortuary staff, the Revs. Bill Mitchell and Oliver Wolfenbarger, and a lot of family and friends of family. Dad had not wanted flowers at his funeral—he had over eighty “bunches”, a fact that provided satisfaction. I watched Dad’s grave be “filled in”. My pastor’s wife tried to lead me away, but she did not understand this was closure for me, and I was insistent, so she watched with me.
I might have watched Dad’s body be put away, but he still dwells within me. I think of him daily, fondly. Even now, forty years later, someone who knew him tells me something like, “You’re his spittin’ image” or “Your Dad will never die as long as you live—you look just like him.” I always find this comforting, and it makes me happy. I guess there’s a little stigma left from when some of my elementary school classmates tried to convince me I was adopted because my Dad was so old.
Thank you, Dear Reader, for allowing me to share. I leave you with some more tidbits from my email world.

Live a good, honorable life…
Then when you get older and think back,
you’ll enjoy it a second time.

Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.

The biggest troublemaker you’ll probably ever have to deal with,
watches you from the mirror every mornin’.

Always go to other people’s funerals,
otherwise they won’t come to yours. (Yogi Berra)

At my funeral,
take the bouquet from my coffin and
throw it into the crowd to see who is next.

"It’s as dead as four o’clock.” – Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy

My doctor asked if anyone in my family suffered from mental illness.
I said, "No, we all seem to enjoy it."

Bob HOPE, ON RECEIVING THE CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL--
"I feel very humble, but I think I have the strength of character to fight it."

A generous army general walked into a bar
and ordered everyone around.

It's a five minute walk from my house to the pub
It's a 35 minute walk from the pub to my house
The difference is staggering.