One of the boys from Darlington is gone...

He lived across the road from my home, we went to the same bus stop and I laughed at him and the other boys smoking in the morning while we waited until the State Trooper tried to scare me into not buying cigarettes, and then I bought my own packs and joined them. He taught me all about poker and I wouldn't play it again until Vietnam because earning a dollar an hour meant I had things I wanted to spend it on, instead of betting on my cards. He and I beat up on the same boy that was bothering my sister, I stopped when the boy turned into the sobbing slime he was, Jerry went down and made him remember the pain of messing with our girls. He threw pears at my brother practicing trumpet in the creek bed. He joined the Marines, his family tradition and where I thought he would do well. When his father had his heart condition he came back home early.
I was standing in the cold at the telephone booth behind the barracks in Fort Sill Oklahoma and talking to my family over their Christmas when my sister told me she was engaged to him. They got married while I was overseas, Germany or Vietnam, and had a beautiful daughter and raised her with snakes and dogs in a trailer in the wilds, where I introduced my wife to the babe and my sister. He got some better work they moved to town had another daughter and we would visit or meet at my Mom's home. Playing Canasta, men against the women - only my sister would play the cards hard, Dad, Jerry and I were counting and knew where every exposed card went.
There were Christmas get togethers, Thanksgivings, bringing our children together for camping, his fished, mine skated, and we all played games and talked and teased. I had his daughter believing she had to whisper on Christmas Eve or Santa might not show - he threatened great harm if I didn't set that right. I did. We played a little Dungeons and Dragons - and many other games with the children. Came back from Germany in time for my son to go trick or treating with his cousins one October.
My mother noted that he had many of the strengths of my father,I always knew he was Jerry and I could count on him for my sister and all our backs if needed. He was working in strip mining, still smoking and had a family history of heart problems and he wasn't getting healthier. One of his daughters wanted me to make him get healthier and I had to tell her that he was doing the healthiest thing he could, he loved his family and friends and it doesn't get healthier than that.
Heart operations, pace maker, pills and by passes and visits to doctors and hospitals, and he didn't get healthier but he hung on and in there, seeing five grandchildren, giving away his daughters to their husbands' care and always interested and wishing he could do more and helping. I saw him last when I went to drive his truck, with the dented front end he had provided it, to Florida with some of the stuff they were moving. He was under Hospice care at his daughter's home, and had a good Tuesday going outside, playing with his grandsons and laughing a little and caring a lot. He never woke on Wednesday and passed on at 7:10 this morning in Florida. I always told my wife that she was going to have to learn how to throw far if she were going to feed me and my son outside the walls of Heaven (knowing I would never get in) but now Jerry is there I don't have to worry, he throws just fine, ask my brother.