Blood Moons, Hurricanes & The Wondrous Nothing

What my father taught me about pissy wine and dying with dignity

There’s no pain like the cruel knowing of an impending end– memories of a sweet seabreeze, dominoes, slamming, white rum, spilling, and a beautiful wife, laughing, now vacated and, in their place, a swollen prostate, oxygen tubes, emaciated dreams, and caskets. I will never forget the look on my father’s face when I visited him in the hospital. Ah, that stare, that haunting stare through dark eyes, eyes I inherited, looking towards the wondrous nothing.  His regret, so palpable, so powerful, it filled the room like a massive tumor.

“You’re not going to die here,” I whispered in his ear. “I promise. I’m taking you home.” 

The man who wore blood red suits, who shouted that my wine “tasted like piss,” retaliation for confiscating the Guinness, white rum, and oversized muffins he brought back from a visit with his brother in Port St. Lucie was now journeying to the ancestral realm, and I was his chaperone. 

The pissy wine he was talking about was probably the $10 MAN pinotage I had been buying from Whole Foods. But it could also have been that Vacqueyras I fell in love with, the one with the simple drawing of a vine on an orange label. I bought it at the Total Wine & More on Biscayne Boulevard in North Miami Beach. Back in the day, I purchased many wines there, having bonded with the talented sales reps who also shared a passion for wine, some having gone on to become somms and six-figure earning sales reps for distributors. It was Alex who recommended the Vacqueyras with the orange label, pointing out the “Provencal market” note written on the description.

I loved those “market” note references in wine descriptions. In a culture of language I often felt disconnected from, I understood this Provencal market description of lavender and jasmine, rosemary and thyme.

Thyme is to Jamaican cooking what reggae music is to the world–a must. If you don’t see naked thyme sprigs in a Jamaican cook’s Dutch pot, it’s not Jamaican food. I grew up going to the West Indian markets with my mother in Miami and in Jamaica. She was an amazing cook, an inexhaustible shopper. I loved the hustle and bustle, the haggling, the smell of yams and green bananas, dried beans, and roasting meats, the smell of fleshy arms, sweaty hairlines, and musky papaya, handsome men cutting coconuts with wounded machetes.

My father was the time-keeper during these market visits, annoyed at my mother for haggling over a couple of cents, for feeling the need to pick up every mango, every plantain, every “pear” (avocado to Americans), pressing, thumbing, and scrutinizing for details that seem to be a secret exchange between her and Jesus. 

   What was my father thinking, staring at the wondrous nothing? 

“Precious memories, how they linger

How they ever flood my soul

In the stillness of the midnight,

Precious, sacred scenes unfold…”

He loved this song. He sang it with his entire self, eyes closed. But those times were long gone, and what remained was the fridge full of dried thyme sprigs, the sacred Dutch pot where endless curry and brown stew dishes had been made, and six bottles of Manischewitz Concord Grape wine my Aunt Sybil brought to the house while my mother was sick–a hopeful cure or perhaps, an elixir of ease.

After I brought him home and after I secured an army of beautiful Caribbean nurses to care for him, the palliative care doctor told me  that my father would die in a couple days. He died about a week later. As usual, the man who did not learn to read until he was eleven years old, who recited poetry to me every morning when he woke me up for school, defied all expectation. 

My father–S.L. O’Connor died during the season of the supermoon lunar eclipse, the season of the blood moon when the full moon crossed into Earth's shadow taking on a blood-red hue. The last supermoon eclipse happened in 1982, the next predicted to happen in 2033. 

One of my fondest memories of S.L. O’Connor was during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. I was in high school about to go into my sophomore or junior year. My family lived in North Miami, now Port-au-Prince, off West Dixie Highway.

We lived in an evacuation zone, so we stayed at a high school with other families while Andrew ravaged the city. A time before navigation apps, my father knew Miami inside out. He was an electrician and worked everywhere. But even he got lost on the drive home, post-Hurricane Andrew, Miami was now a land of broken trees. Trees that had stood for decades looked like they walked right out into the busy intersections, collapsed and died. 

There was no electricity, no running water. It was dangerous to be on the road. Tree branches were still falling, buildings still collapsing. When we got home, we saw that an unfamiliar tree had stabbed the roof of my parents’ tenant’s car. 

My parents got into an argument. I can’t remember why, but my father left. There were rumors that some bodegas were open but where? Which ones? Rumors of secret markets popping up among the rubble. There were rumors that people were selling ice for $8 a bag at Joe Robbie Stadium (now the Hard Rock Stadium) which was about a 20 minute to half hour drive, but in the land of broken trees, it could take hours. 

Like some magician, my father appeared with smoked ham, canned baked beans, thyme, hard dough bread, charcoal, water, and endless bags of ice. He also picked up my childhood best friend, Carol. Neighbors came over. We feasted. 

My father was always a man of surprises–many good, some awful. It was a surprise that he did not want to be buried in that blood red suit. I can see him now in those burgundy bell bottoms and that blood red long sleeve shirt walking through my elementary school parking lot, his afro, like a big, black, furry sun. Me, horrified by the ensemble but ecstatic to see him.