My mother didn’t know most of the many women her dad married, but in email last year casually referred to a shooting. Of her father. By one of the wives. Next (I think) he married a woman named Evelyn, and, believe it or not, they lived on Daniels Avenue on SMU campus right down the street from my sorority house . . .
My mother claimed to see demons lurking in corners, hiding behind TV anchors’ smiles, sitting on cashiers’ shoulders. The devil’s minions were always hovering, she said, waiting to leap the second you gave them an opening, which was easy to do. Letting a stranger touch your head, listening to rock music, or falling asleep with the TV on were just . . .
Whatever I paid to search the Dallas Morning News archives last month allowed me access to something like 50 articles, but only for 24 hours. So after I found what I was looking for (confirmation that one of my mom’s father’s wives really did shoot him), and had exhausted all possible searches on the subject, I typed in other Texan . . .
Depression isn’t something my dad’s family ever talked about, but in the last few years I’ve learned that my granddad suffered from it. My aunt and I unearthed his meditation on February (below) when I was in Tennessee last summer. Until reading these notes, I never particularly thought of him as a religious guy.