7.
C-Bone, Oakland, May 1998—I’d come home from Hoover Elementary to find my pops waiting in the front room near the door, looking really bummed out. My aunt had called him at work from the hospital, because Mom had died of pneumonia.
Actually, for me it was almost a relief. She had been getting weirder and weirder during the last six months, an embarrassment to me around my few friends. Losing even more weight, shaky and twitchy when she moved around, but forgetful, irrational, and becoming really mean-spirited. She’d never been anything but a kind and caring mother to me growing up, before the Huntington’s began taking its dreadful toll.
And, yeah I thought it was probably a relief to my pops, too, whether he admitted it or not. It hadn’t been pleasant for him for the last several yea
