zeb music moment - My Brother keith

Zen Music Moment

My brother Keith. He passed away just about 4 years ago. He was older than I by about ten years. But, I had always been close to him and to his kids, Brian and Ellen.
Keith was the guy who when he came home from the air force would bring me stacks of comic books that his buddies there had collected. He was the guy who drove to Kansas to watch me play college football. When he arrived, I wasn’t in the room because I was out pacing the campus, a thing I did for nerves before the games, so he just settled in with the rest of the guys. Keith never knew there was a such thing as a stranger, one of my buddies had said.
Keith actually lived with me for a short time after his divorce. I was teaching and coaching when he moved in. It was football season, and Keith felt like playing football was like getting to be a good. Getting to coach it was the next best thing.
He was pretty surprised when he found out just how much time we spent at the job, breaking down films over and over and planning for the opponents. That might have taken a little of the luster off it for him, but a few years later when I decided to leave football, for what would eventually be 6 years, I told him my decision, and he said “why would you want to do that?”

Keith was also a cowboy at heart. For several years, besides doing his job as an airline engine mechanic at American Airlines, he worked as a farrier and hose trainer. There was a small local horse track outside of town and after moving out of my house, eh moved into a trailer there to be close to the horses.
He always wore his blue jams and boots, with his pant legs obviously quickly almost stuffed in the boots. He walked with a swagger, smoked way too much and he could cuss with the best of them. Keith could create a stream of swear words that even a pirate would blush at. Keith could drive his standard pickup with a cigarette in one hand, a beer in the other and manage to drink the can dry, crush it and toss it in the back of his moving pick up while juggling his cigarette and next cold can. Despite the fact he was a crusty tough guy, he sometimes sat very girlishly with one leg wrapped around the other. I always giggled silently when I saw him in that position.

He had damaged vocal chords when he had to have radiation treatments for a growth in his throat. After that, he spoke with a gravelly voice that seemed to be a reflection of his rough nature. He had nicknames for everyone, intended to shock and at te same time praise. He once told my brother Tom, “well, you’re a good looking son of a bitch, ain’t ya?” To my wife who had finished her master’s degree, he said, “You’re one smart bitch.”
Keith took some getting used to by some people of milder sensibilities, but till his end, would still never drink a beer in front of dad, and even tried to temper his language in front of the man he loved so dearly.

Keith died of several things. He had the problems with his throat, but still continued to smoke, as hard headed of a son of a bitch as he was. And, I say that with all affection. He would have nodded and said, “I’m gonna do what I want to.” He drank a lot, and probably more to medicate himself. This eventually caused a lot of intestinal problems, kinks and blockages. I sat with him in the hospital a few times when he would finally seek treatment.

When he died, he collapsed at home, getting ready to brush his teeth. His adopt4ed daughter from his marriage to Debbie rushed to him. She said he lay on the floor, smiled and then was gone.

Brian and Ellen asked me to be the speaker at the funeral. I have spoken at three funerals, Ashley’s mom Nelva, Keith’s and my Dad’s. All hard and all, to me a person who cri3es easily, tough to be able to stand and speak about what that person was.
Brian and Ellen didn’t want a preacher to do the service and the family wanted him brined in an old west style pine box. I think he would have liked that. He would have been pissed that we made a big deal about him, but had he been there, would have joined right in the story telling, laughing, slapping his knee and sitting in that faggish girl thing he did.
After I spoke, telling the story of Keith Dugan and then telling anecdotes of my own about him, the floodgates opened. Everyone wanted to talk about something they did with Keith. It became a celebration of Keith’s life. Finally, the stories wound down, and the last song played over the sound system. They had chosen all Johnny cash songs to play as the crowd entered and sat. At the end, the final song was “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” It was a song written by Kris Kristoferson and sung so painfully by Johnny Cash.
I sat now, behind the podium, with the refrain of that song about a man, his pain and his beer drifting about me. There, protected from the view of the crowd, I my piece spoken, I could finally mourn. Tears filled my eyes and I held in the sob as it painfully ached in my chest. I can never hear that song again without thinking of my dear brother, gone far too early and missed so greatly.

And there's nothin' short of dyin',
Half as lonesome as the sound,
On the sleepin' city sidewalks:
Sunday mornin' comin' down.