John Dedeke

A Decent Tip for a Long-Overdue Conversation

ProseJohn DedekeComment

I can’t sleep so I think about emails and cemeteries and was the tip I left at that dive tonight enough? Do I need to go back and leave a fiver, and hope that it will get back to the girl who kindly served me two bottles of Busch I thought I’d never drink but of course I did? I can stop there on the way to the cemetery, maybe pick up a few more bottles to take with me and drink when I get to the gravesite because my grandpa probably would have drunk Busch and maybe then we’d finally have some common ground between us and could have a decent conversation. And then I could ask him what made him happy and why he didn’t try to put more of that in his life instead of worrying about all of the things that made him unhappy, making everyone around him unhappy in the process. But he probably wouldn’t have an answer for that. He would probably be silent again, as he’s been all these years, and I would have to drink his beer and be silent, too.