#greghyatt

Okay, so, I moved from cooking professionally to FOH. I started bartending and I'm really fucking good at it, if I may say so myself. Bounced around a few places, managed a couple of spots. Like I said, I'm good at my job. Got interviewed by a few local publications, even did the weirdest interview I could possibly imagine with a men's magazine.

Anyway.

I started dating a woman and it started really great. We clicked and got along insanely well and we ended up getting married. It was weird and fun and we adopted a dog, Tiberius, and we had a pretty healthy relationship until her substance abuse problems came back after COVID. It ended after I came home from work one night, found her crying on the living room floor. I tried to comfort, find out what was wrong and, I'll be honest, the events caused me to block a lot of the night from my memory. I remember talking to her. Her crying. And nothing. Until she said "I want you to know, I'll remember this. I hate you." And punched me in the neck and face.

So, after filing paperwork for a restraining order and a DV trial and a divorce...

Pfft.

Use it.

Turn it into action. Mid-term elections are in 2018. Protest. Fight this clown.

Take a page from the GOP and their treatment of President Obama; make the racist misogynist fight for every second of the next four years.

All day, I’ve been thinking about this.

About what I’d write.

On August 29th, 1991, cancer took my grandmother.

People talk about Strong Female Characters? That was Amelia Finch.

When my mother was nine, her father walked out on her, her three older siblings and my grandmother. You know what she did? Raised those kids right. She worked her ass off. My aunts and uncle and mother. They did okay.

My grandmother retired when she was diagnosed. By the time they caught it, it had already spread to her liver. That’s a death sentence.

She went through chemo, surgery, everything.

I lost my grandma in less than two years.

She was herself to the end. I spent summers in New York. She would teach us card games, take us on walks, read to us.

She read me It. The opening chapter, at least. Scared the hell out of me and I still snatched up the book the first chance I got. She encouraged me to write. Recognized my depression.

I was on a camping trip with my Boy Scout troop when she died. My parents sat my brother and I down when I got home and told us. I remember crying. I couldn’t touch her. I could barely look at her in the coffin. It wasn’t her. A shadow of her in some wooden box, soon to be turned to ash.

Her grandchildren weren’t allowed in the service, so we sat in the basement of the funeral home, telling stories, remembering her.

Christmas rolled around and the last gift I opened that morning was from her. She knew she wouldn’t see December and got us all gifts. It’s still on my bookshelf. A history of Marvel Comics.

(via Greg Hyatt (@g.hyatt) • Instagram photos and videos)

(via Johnny BlackHeart (@blackheartsbarbershop) • Instagram photos and videos)