The Thousand My Wife Laughed At

I am going to give you his words. Not all of them, because some of them are mine to keep. But the ones that matter, you should have, the way I had them that morning in the truck.

He wrote:

“Dale. If you are reading this then I expect things did not go the way I hoped, and I am sorry for that, because there is a lot I meant to say to you and never did. I was never good at the saying. Your mother was the talker and I let her do it and then she was gone and I just never picked it up.

“I owe you an apology for Tuesday night. I should not have come to your house and put you in a hard spot in front of your wife. I could see it landed wrong. That is on me, son. I asked wrong and I asked at the wrong time and I would not say why, and a man has no business asking for money and not saying why. You were raised better than to hand it over blind and I am proud you have a wife who watches the dollar, even if her way of saying it is sharper than I would like.

“But I want you to know the thousand was not for me. I have everything a man needs and most of what he wants. The thousand was for the Hobbs’ little girl, to finish her stone, and I did not say so because that was never the kind of thing I could say out loud. Your grandpa’s brother went in the ground with nothing and it broke something in this family that I have spent my whole life trying to mend one grave at a time. I never told you because the minute you tell a thing like that it stops being giving and starts being showing, and I did not want to show. I wanted to give. There is a difference and I believe the Lord knows it even when nobody else does.

“I have not been a rich man by the bank’s count. But I will tell you, son, I have been let in on more goodbyes than any man I know, and I have been able to make a hard day a little less hard for folks who could not do a thing for me back, and if you want to know what I think God kept me on this ground this long to do, that was it. The small things. The quiet things. I would not trade them for a new truck and I would not trade them for anybody’s good opinion.

“Take care of your mother’s grave for me and see that the Hobbs get their stone. The money is in the coffee can on the top shelf, more than enough, I have been setting it by. Do not let that monument man tell the Hobbs it was me.