Grandpa

I knew two things about my grandpa: he was part Native American and he was an alcoholic. He was also a gambler too but I think that’s part of being an alcoholic. He liked everything to excess. He had an animal’s head in his living room and I used to stare at it. I don’t remember what it was. Oh wait, it was a cheetah. Or cougar? It was a white cat and I felt so bad for it. But my grandpa was part Cherokee and he said the animal was from his mom. He was proud of being Cherokee. He said that’s why he had a flat butt and no hair. His couches were leather and when I slept on them I would wake up stuck with sweat. He had a slot machine in his living room and lots of quarters. His wife got hurt a lot. She broke her neck once. But she didn’t die. She took a lot of pills. She was my mom’s age. My mom and her used to call each other sisters. I think that’s kind of weird. I visited him at work once. He had a big office and I had to go up an elevator to get to it. Before I got to the office there was a table with a bunch of flowers on it. I could tell he was important. He introduced me to a man in the hallway and they laughed and he patted the man on the back. He used to drink scotch on ice and when my mom was with him she would do the same. He lived in Oklahoma and said it was okay to drive drunk there. He used to fall asleep on the couch with the TV on. My mom would tell me to leave him there. When his wife died he got really sad. He would call my mom crying. She would go visit him but I wasn’t allowed to. He spent a lot of time in the casinos. They knew him well and would buy his meals. He said he wanted to die and a few months later he did.