I am, by choice, a Christian, by my father's family is Jewish, and I've always felt very sympatico with the Jewish traditions, even if I don't really understand them or have a "right" to claim them as my own.
I had fully intended at the time of my last post to begin the story of Bertha, and I do promise to share that story soon. However, since April 13, I have been unable to do much of anything except what needs to be done. That week-long period of mourning has passed and I am now starting to get back to normal.
On the afternoon of April 13, my world was changed and lessened forever when my stepfather, John Berreyes, died. The circumstances of his death were sudden, violent, and, in retrospect, probably preventable. It was both a long time in coming and a total shock. It was caused by internal and external factors. It seems both completely senseless and completely sensible. It was and is, as life is, complex, messy, unfulfilling, tragic. It was horribly private and intimate and unexpectedly public. It is something I am likely to share in more detail at another point. It is not something I will ever forget, no matter how much I wish I could; it is something I never SHOULD forget.
I come from a family of emotional giants. My mother, father, and brother are my genuine heroes. They escaped troubling pasts and have made beautiful and productive lives for themselves; raised with love, health, and confidence, my own experiences and trials pale in comparison to them. Compared to all of us, John was a giant. Whatever trauma or shock or trouble you can imagine for a child or an adult, John had a story to beat it tenfold. An abused and neglected child barely raised by alcoholic parents in poverty, he served in Vietnam. Part Native-American, he filed as a conscientious objector, but (as often happened) his desire to serve his country without being forced to kill was ignored, and he soon found himself on a medical chopper with a machine gun. He commanding officer decided to try to make money off of the war and began running drugs to the VC, effectively erasing his entire unit from the Army's records and ordering his men to mow down innocent villagers. "You don't know how many people I killed," John told me more than once with tears in his eyes, the echoes of souls whose lives he felt responsible for. He once told me that he only lived through it by doing his job poorly, aiming badly at his targets and trying to see how few he could shoot (in the legs or arms so as not to be non-lethal) before his insane CO caught on. After a year of this hell, their chopper was ambushed and John watched his entire company get slaughtered. He escaped into the jungle and was quickly captured and placed into a POW "camp," which was a bamboo cell suspended over an uncharted river. He was tortured for information that he didn't have. He liked to tell the story about how when he was being questioned, the VC would ask "Where are the Americans?" and John would answer "They're all stuck in traffic on the fucking 405 freeway."
Near death and hallucinating that his life was over, he saw a bright light early one morning and believed this light to be God. It turned out to be an American patrol boat that was clearing the area. John was rescued and returned to a VA hospital in Florida, where after a year of maintenance ("Treatment" is not the word), he was discharged, told that he was no longer eligible for VA benefits because the Army had no record of his combat or mission work. Because he was part of a rogue operation (which may or may not have been authorized by the CIA or other secret ops), he was considered a deserter, that his story wasn't true, and that he would receive no further support from the government. I wish I could say this was a unique story, but we all know it isn't.
John came back to California, where he decided to go into police work, only to learn that the police department was as corrupt and crooked as the gangs they were fighting against. After shooting a man in the line of duty, he was again discharged -- cleared of all wrongdoing, but again told that he could not discuss the case with anyone.
For years John was little more than a homeless vet; he drove a truck, worked on ranches, lived from hand-to-mouth. He sent what little money he made to an ex-wife (married briefly before his stint in the war) so he could support a son and daughter he barely knew. He eventually found religion while lying alone staring at the stars.
He met my mother in the early 1990s. She was recently divorced, a midwestern native with two masters degrees and a lifetime of relative comfort and middle-class normalcy. She was a counselor at a camp for former teenage gang members; he was their activities counselor. He fell in love with her instantly and would send these violent former offenders to her with notes saying "Give John a chance." Slowly, he won her heart.
After almost a decade of living together, they married in October, 2001. I was licensed by the State of California to perform the marriage, and it included my newly born niece as a 10 month old flower-girl, readings from scripture, and an Apache handwashing ceremony and blessing. Since then, John worked as a master carpenter and finisher, and received his contracting license last year. His handwork is called by those who know pure genius: when I needed bookshelves to house my hundreds of books and films, he built a five-column, twelve foot high, 25 foot high unit that would have easily cost $7000, with perfectly rounded edges, a solid blond finish. He brought it to my condo in the back of his pickup truck (one trip) and installed it within a few hours. In that same space, he later built a loft in the living room so I could bring in a roommate, and when the place was sold, he installed a new kitchen and built an entirely new closet so it could be sold as a 2-bedroom. Yes, I was his stepson, his beloved wife's oldest. But he did similar acts of generosity for neighbors. After he died, one neighbor whom I had never met told me how John spent two weekends installing moulding in his kitchen, asking for no money except material costs. All around this house -- the bathrooms, the TV room, the living room, the completely redesigned kitchen -- John left his handiwork. I grew up in this house and John once told me he considered it my house, but that is patently ridiculous.
He fixed my guitar. He fixed my cars. He did everything out of love.
The day before he died, he told my mother "My only purpose in life is to make sure you're happy." He spent the day playing with his grandchildren (adopted, but as much his as anyone's) and walking on the beach with my mother.
The details of his final hour are too painful and ugly, as most sudden deaths are, I imagine, so forgive me for not reliving that experience at the moment. I take small solace in the fact that I was able to tell him how much I love him and how much his existence means to me and how much it inspires me. "Your life means that I get to do what I do," I told him through tears. "Because of what you have survived, I can go out and teach people how to play and how to be proud of their imagination."
At the funeral on Saturday, there were many tears and a few laughs, as family, friends, and near-strangers came from far and near. The eight year old girl who lives next door -- I don't even know her name -- started crying when she was talking about how John always made her laugh every time she saw him.
I was able to sing a song, "After the Gold Rush," by Neil Young. John loved Neil Young, and the song always reminded me of him, not just because it was about aliens (John believed in aliens, but in a good way, as if they could help us solve our problems), but because it's about overcoming darkness and moving from one world to another. The lyrics are here just for the record, and they'll remain in my heart forever.
Well, I dreamed I saw the knights
In armor coming,
Saying something about a queen.
There were peasants singing and
Drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree.
There was a fanfare blowing
To the sun
That was floating on the breeze.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
Look at Mother Nature on the run
In the nineteen seventies.
I was lying in a burned out basement
With the full moon in my eyes.
I was hoping for replacement
When the sun burst thru the sky.
There was a band playing in my head
And I felt like getting high.
I was thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Thinking about what a
Friend had said
I was hoping it was a lie.
Well, I dreamed I saw the silver
Space ships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun,
There were children crying
And colors flying
All around the chosen ones.
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun.
They were flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home in the sun.
Flying Mother Nature's
Silver seed to a new home.
