Coming Back to Alaska for me was very painful, but going in at least I knew my way around and would not have to start from complete scratch. Unfortunately most of my friends were long gone. Turns out after I left a lot of them fell apart, others left school, and others still just disappeared and even today we have not figured out where they went. Seeing the aftermath of their lives was tragic to me. Knowing that even though I had a hard time in California, the good far outweighed the bad down there for me, I still returned of my own free will.
My best friend Ryan had become a drug addict, and his father a convicted sex offender. WTF? It was like I came back to a strange F’ed up world that was just a resemblance of my childhood world. And everything, I mean EVERYTHING seemed smaller to me. My adventurous area in California stretched from Long Beach to the Mohave Desert; A few hundred sqr miles really. Anchorage is a small city. Nowhere near the size of L.A.Metro area. From one end to the other is only a 15 min ride. Lol So yea. Big adjustment for me coming back.
Mom still had not found a place to live and our furniture still had not made it to Alaska yet. It was summer, so as tradition, I was being sent up to my grandparents place again. I was 22 and needed work. So I started working at the local lodge / bar doing painting, cleaning, general maintenance, whatever odd jobs needed done. The other major thing that happened during this time is we found out my Grandfather had Cancer. Starting in the Prostrate and moving to the liver and pancreas. So every week I drove him and my Grandmother to Fairbanks for Chemotherapy. I was slowly watching the man die more every day. It was extremely hard. My grandmother was in denial. She felt her faith would never take him from her. And that all this would pay off and he would beat this. Aug rolled around and the summer job was over in Cantwell. My uncle Jim who was also living with my Grandparents in Cantwell and was the postmaster was going to take over taking his father to treatments and I was to go back to Anchorage. Mom got us a nice 2 bedroom apartment and I started unpacking settling in. I applied at University of Alaska Anchorage, and tried to transfer credits… (again I want to cover that later cause it was a huge mess) Needless to say I didn’t get much from the California system to follow me. So I had to take GERs over again. I took the basics the first semester figuring I would test out of some of them once I got an advisor. Sept 1994, My birthday was on the 11th and we went up to Cantwell with all my family to celebrate. My grandfather was really bad. Just the month away he got so much worse. Being away made it even clearer than when I was there with him watching it happen slowly. But he kept fighting. Unfortunately the last conversation I had with him was rather prophetic. He really didn’t like that I was going into a computer science career path. In retrospect I have to agree it was the biggest mistake, but I didn’t know much else. The aurgument was basically me yeling at him for trying to tell me something about a life he knows nothing about. And that I am not my uncle Ron and I am not cut out to be an engineer. It would be the last words I would say to the man face to face. We returned to Anchorage and the next week we got a call that we should come back up. I told mom to go with Ron and I would get up after my test. My grandfather got on the phone and told me to stay here and do my test at the protest of my Uncle Jim. Well my mother and Ron said they would wait too, if it was ok with Pap. On the 21st we headed up early morning to get up there asap. When we arrived 4 hours later in Cantwell we see Jim out walking on the road. Ron asked him something I didn’t hear what, and we headed into the house. My grandfather was in so much pain the night before they called the local doctor down from Healy another 45 mins north. And in the end he said there was nothing they could do for him. We were going. He would never make it to Fairbanks to a hospital even with a helicopter. He laid there while my mother Ron and I were driving up to him. And they gave him a lethal dose of pain medication. By the time we got there they had called the morgue to come get him and they were half way there. As we were carrying him out to the vehicle for transport up to Fairbanks Jim bangs Paps head on the cornor of the dresser. I kept expecting pap to wake up and smack him across the face. But of course it didn’t. at that moment it was not anything we just gave a look at my uncle and kept on with what was going on. Mom and my grandmother sat in the kitchen crying. He was off. As we sat around in that cold house the rest of the morning. I suddenly let out a belly laugh like my grandfather used to do when I think about the strange events of getting him out there. Everyone looks at me in the oddest way. And I explain about Jim hitting Pap’s head and how I was half expecting him to hit him and was just imagining the look on Pap’s face as a ghost upon witnessing that event. Then my grandmother lets out a laugh and my uncle Ron and my mother. Cause as we look over at Jim all of us had been thinking that EXACT same thing at that moment even Jim, and it was just so strange it was funny. Again we all expected to see Paps ghost appear Just roaring in laughter at Jims expense. Poor Uncle Jim. In the end he got the last laugh. The normal stuff continued. My grandma opted for cremation as my grandfather’s final wishes were to be spread on his hunting grounds. It was something we were going to do the next summer. Always the next summer and the next summer… it just didn’t happen. More on that later.
I did one semester at UAA and was utterly failing. I lost all my credits from the cal state system, I was absent a lot because of stuff with my grandfather, and I had no luck getting an advisor. So I quit. Instead I got a job at a local OfficeMax on the retail floor. It was not much but it was a job that was close by my home and one I could do through the winter and summer. So that was a plus. I moved up to working the electronics section, but still had to do the furniture cause I was one of the few guys at the place that could do the heavy lifting at night. Keep in mind I’m all of 5’8” and around 250lbs at that time. I was not a strong man by any means. Lol I just happened to be the GUY that was there and so it became the guy who was asked to do it. Retail is not the most rewarding of jobs, but its good money and its something one can do and not really have to THINK a whole lot. It’s a matter of giving someone what they already want or they would not be there in the first place. Not too hard a concept. After trying to work and go to school was ending up badly I eventually left college altogether and just started doing more and more shifts. Much to my own disgust, because I was still living with my mother in a very small 2 bedroom apartment.
I got through a full year at OfficeMAX and the manager and I came to blows. I want to tell myself it was not because he was a black ignorant bastard, just an ignorant bastard. But I know part of it was that he was black. It’s a notion I TRY very hard not to give into. Racism is not a fair thing, but I know it’s in me to some extent cause when I get REALLY mad it comes out. Be it native, or black, or Foreign in general. It hits. Now I know MANY mixed race peoples and have loved one native woman as close as family myself, but I still sit on these feelings about many of them I have a hard time defeating within myself. Ultimately I was fired from Officemax or rather I was given the choice to quit or be fired. I quit.
At this point I didn’t know what to do. I started looking again and also started back at college for another semester. Some time goes by and I get contacted by my direct manager from Officemax and she tells me her and several others are going to be opening a new CompUSA in anchorage and asked if I would be interested in working with them. I jumped on the chance to work from the ground up, and was doubly reassured because the store manager that fired me was NOT going to be a part of the operation. SO that continued my Retail life once more.
CompUSA. Lol Well it was a great place to work for a while. Grand opening was spectacular in Alaska. We were a community with a lot of money to spend and not much technology yet in the hands of the public. So it was a growing field. I was quick and knowledgeable on the retail floor and had a knack with the people coming in showing them what they really wanted not just what they think they wanted. I had several local people that just would not talk to anyone but me, and that carried with it a certain amount of pride for me. Over time I progressed through the store ranks from floor, to software, to upgrades, to the tech shop, to inventory control, and finally tech administrator. All in all I was there a little over a year and a half. Trained about a dozen people and repaired hundreds of machines. It came to a point I realized I could be doing so much more if I did not have to deal with the retail part of the business so much. And I left CompUSA for bigger and better things. I went to work for myself. First doing small jobs at locations like where my uncle and mother worked. Then later doing full contract jobs on the north slope and on the Alyeska pipeline. Fantastic money. Life changing money really…
Mom really wanted a house, so we started looking with my uncle and grandmother around every weekend, and finally we found just the right place. It was a fixer upper yes, but it was a home. A real true home. It turned out the one we loved the most was one that my uncle Ron had known them and they were just needing to sell it asap as they were leaving the state. So we got a really good deal. (better than our realtor wanted cause it cut his commission) in the end we got the place for $180,000. My uncle put down $30k and I put down $10, and my mother another $10. In the end we got a great house (2 levels) {4 bedrooms 2 living rooms, 2 bath, 1 laundry room, 1 kitchen, and a large front and back yard.} I basically laid claim to the downstairs as it was almost like an apartment in itself. And that has been my home ever since. Still with my mother yes, but we really do not see each other much. Plus the added benefit we are not bumping into each other all the time as we were in the apartment. Was I disappointed that I was going to be with my mother yet again? YES. But at the same time when I looked at what we were paying in rent for nothing, now we had a mortgage at the same price and we owned something. SO I relented to the will of my family.
Eventually life got pretty good again. Work was steady, people in my life, doing things for my Uncle when he is out of town. Going up during free time to spend with my other uncle and grandmother in Cantwell. Things were what I would call normal. Possibly for the first time in a long time. It was also soon to be the last time in a long time.
2000 The turn of the millennia came and went, and with it my naive sense of live. My Grandmothers brother got deathly sick. He had been ill off and on for years but he was the last of her direct family and she wanted to be with him, so she was getting ready to head down to PA while he was on his deathbed from cancer. On her way she stopped overnight in Anchorage as she was traveling with my Uncle Ron and he had 1 more day of work. Plus its 4 hours from where she lives driving time, so yea I drove up and got her and my uncle Ron was taking her down to PA. That night Uncle Clair died, and my grandmothers light defused I guess is how you would put it. She was so looking forward to seeing him. And in an instant I watched her face change into terror. Griving she handed my mother the phone walked into a cornor of the room, and sat crying. The next day I take her and my uncle Ron to the airport, give her a hug and tell her I will see her when she gets home. She nodded and walked off. That would be the last day I would see her.
Upon reaching PA and getting settled in at the hotel, she had a massive stroke and was unable to move. My uncle finally got hotel security to let him into her room and they found her and took her to the hospital. She kept showing signs she may get better over the next month or so, while my uncle Ron took care of things for Clairs funeral. She saw most of the family down there, and we are told she will come home soon, so no need to come down. Her mind was going, she kept saying to people my mother or I was there that we just were around the corner or something. The doctor said it was things firing in her mind, that she was remembering things and thinking we were there. But ultimately the day before she was to return back to Alaska, she had a massive stroke again, and died this time.
My uncle Ron returned with her cremated remains to spread with my grandfathers. (Again more on that later because that too did not happen again for a while) So it was my mother, her two brothers and I. The lawyers get involved to figure things out and I basically tell them I want nothing to do with any of it. Make it simple and leave it to the 3 siblings inherit. I lost a lot of my ambition to do well in life. So much had been happening and it was feeling like ok family dying, they had a good long life it was their time, life is normal, I’m just grieving I’ll get over it. I return to college again, trying to find my direction in life. Trying to make sence of things. 2000 ends with the first Christmas without my grandmother being here. A very strange feeling because life was just not as sweet.
Prior to this a family friend’s child, Amie, was on her own and had a newborn. I looked at her as a new beginning. I wanted so bad to be her husband, but not really for her. Mostly because she had a child, Tyler, that needed someone to provide for him, and I felt needed a father. And though I thought I loved Amie, I don’t think it was really a love that would have lasted. Because I didn’t know what love was. I may still not know to be truthful. Eventually She meet someone and they got close and married. While I was still close to her, it was never quite the same between us. That is until the end of march 2001.
My mother was going on a trip to Florida for a conference, and my Uncle Ron had been fighting some bug for a while and we had not seen him. She had called to tell him she was going to be gone for a while and that Mom and I were going to be going out to dinner and to a few shows that weekend, and that he was welcome to join us if he wanted to see her before she went. Well he called her and was very sick. He had a scratchy throat sound to his voice and he said he had this before it was something he had to go to the doctors to take care of and would when his doctor came home. I jokingly said something like well I don’t want to come over and find you dead or something you idiot you need to go to the doctor, and he said Well I just said I was going to go I just need to wait a bit. OK well, that’s fine. So we have our weekend together and before mom leaves she calls over to check on him. No answer… we didn’t think much of it at the time, he could have been out, or with other friends whatever… I told mom last thing that I would go over and check on him to see whats up. She was happy with that. So off mom goes to Florida. On my way home I stop off at my uncles place that afternoon.
As I pull up his car is outside, which was not too much a surprise cause he had 2 vehicles and the truck was normally in the garage. So I walk up and ring the doorbell first. As I was unlocking the door I poke my head in and hear the TV, and I yell in Its me… Just dropping by to see how things are. No answer. I look in the garage the blazer is there. As I walk up the stairs to the 2nd floor I see his bedroom light on and the TV on in there I start walking towards it and look forward. In the shadows of the bathroom I see a shape on the floor and within a second I see it’s my uncle Ron. I stop in my tracks and say that’s not god dam funny Ron! After all the last thing I said to him was I didn’t want to find him dead, and knowing my family I thought he was pulling a practical joke on me. You would just have had to know my uncles… But as I approached him something wasn’t right. I touched him and he was cold. I tried to move him from a seated position and he was stiff as a board. He was long dead. I sat there for probably 5 mins with his body on my lap staring down into his dead eyes, begging god to just let him be ok. Please go wake up Ron, please wake up. PLEASE. Crying I push him back, and walk up to the phone on the 3rd level. I call 911, and they ask me what the emergency is. I can hardly speak. I apologize to the lady asking I didn’t know what else to do. That I found my uncle dead and I didn’t know who to call. She said some other things, but I couldn’t hardly even tell her where I was. They had to trace the call. I was completely shutting down. Physically, emotionally, everything. I was shutting down.
I was able to walk downstairs and let the police in and then I got off the phone. They took it from there as I stood in the dining room looking down at the paramedics come in. the Police asked me a few questions and I answered almost automatically and unknowing.. I hear them break my Uncles bones in order to get him on the stretcher. I see him in the light of th room as they reposition him and for the first time see the discoloration of his face and hands. He had been dead for several days. As the police was talking to me I walked over to the answer machine and press play. I hear the message from my mom and I a few days prior. Knowing that was around when he probably died. I looked up at the police officer and was gone. I don’t remember why, but they would not leave me there alone. I handed them my mother’s Itinerary and said she is gone. They asked if I had anyone else in the state and they called up to my Uncle Jim. Thus informing him of his brothers death and my state upon finding him. They would not leave me alone. And all I wanted to do was go home. The only person I could call was Amie and her mother. Amie got there after Ron was gone, but she had never seen me like this. I don’t even remember much more but she said upon seeing me I was as white as a ghost myself. She got me home and her mother came home with me. My Uncle Jim had not arrived many many hours later. After 8 hours went by I know something was wrong there too. My mother had not yet arrived in Florida yet and I had yet to talk to Jim myself. I called and called and called. Back then we didn’t have cell phones on every person. They were still more a business expense, so the only two that had em were myself and my Uncle Ron. My Uncle Jim and My mother had yet to embrace this convenience.
Finally Terisa (Amies Mother) called the police again to find out if there was anything on my uncle Jim. As by this time it was 10 hours after finding my Uncle Ron and its only a 4 hour drive. A few more mins go by and we get a call back that my uncle Jim had hit the train coming down and was being helicoptered to the Hospital. Terisa was totally in shock not knowing how to tell me. It only took a look. And I knew. I remember a vision of my grandmother telling me it was not over yet, to be strong and you will get through this. IDK if it was real or just my imagination. I’m sure it was all in my mind. Once we got word of my uncles arrival at the hospital we drove down to there and he was pretty banged up, but was alive. I sat there near comatose, but my uncle Jim was alive. Broken ribs, very scared up arms and face from the broken glass. But he was alive. Once I was able to talk to him they sedated him and told us to go home. That he would be much better once they did some stiches and got him checked into the hospital.
When we got home Mom called to say she got to Florida and was settled in at the hotel. Terisa answered the phone and mom asked what happened that she was there? The Story of the night was told to her from Terisa and my mothers screams I could hear from across the room from the phone. Insisting on talking to me I answered her questions 1 by 1 and she reassured me she was coming home as soon as she could. Upon hearing my mother’s voice I was gone. I collapsed. All I remember is the screams of my mother from the phone and the voices of Amie and Terisa as they reassure her I was ok just asleep. The next day we went to pickup mom at the airport just 24hrs after I dropped her off and the beginning of this nightmare. It was April 1st 2001. Any other year had someone told me this would be what was happening now I would have been all HA HA HA April fools!! But this day was all too real. Too real.
As my Uncle Jim slowly got better I had to get him a new car to go home with. He didn’t want either of my uncle Rons vehicles. Which would have made things easier? So I took my uncles vehicles and got him a station wagon that was similar to the one he had. It was the 90s style Ford Taurus design, but the Mercury model that I got him. A little interior work needed done but all in all he was happy with it.
In turn I got rid of my car and my mother’s clunker and we kept my uncle Rons vehicles. Both we still drive today. Ron died with no will, so we just played it by year. Since he chose to have Grandma cremated we figured it was good enough for him as well. So now we had 3 of our relatives cremated and whose ashes were to be spread. My mother was named the executor by the court because my uncle Jim was incapacitated in the hospital at the time. Over the next several months we got rid of all the belongings in Rons condo, and took some of it and put it in our retrospective homes in Cantwell and Anchorage. Making the house Mom and I bought all the more crowded with THINGS!
The rest was donated or trashed. And so very quickly his condo was gone from our lives, almost as fast as it seemed we lost him.
During this period a young girl came into my life. A young women that was magical In all our lives really. She was the teenage daughter of one of our closest friends from work, and quickly she became like a little sister to me. She was a wonderful kid that was always eger to help out or interested in what was going on with everyone. Something about her reminded me of myself at that age. Very smart yet still very shy around people she didn’t know. But she loved games and cards, and anything that we could do for family nights. Anything that made our families closer, she was often behind it. Krystal was a very sweet girl in a world of turmoil to me; Quickly becoming my center if you will. Because when Things got bad I just needed to think of something for her or whatever and things would get better. Sister, daughter, Friend, whatever. It was a source of a good feeling that I treasured. At this point in my life I needed to be someone good for someone else. I needed to allow what I felt for my uncle Ron to live in myself with another. She became that focus of attention.
Sept 11th 2001 My birthday. A year in turmoil capped with a birthday surprise. The deaths of thousands on a day that forever will be seen as a day of mourning from this time forth. I watch on TV as I witness a horror that makes my own grief pale in comparison. I sat there unbelieving, alone. My mother was working, My uncle in Cantwell, and Krystal in school. Thankfully she was. For on that day I lost what was left of my faith in god. I opened my eyes to the cruelty of the world. I knew for the first time in my life, that THIS is all we have, and I witness the death of countless thousands as those buildings fell to the ground. What seemed to be tears falling like rain from a strangling cloud? I sat glued to the TV, knowing that like myself, we are all alone in existence. All of us powerless to stop anything. All of us, weak pathetic beings that prey to a god that is as indifferent to us as we to the atoms that make up our existence. Sept 11th 2001 was the day the man that Bill Wheeler once was, died. No religion, no friendship, no faith, no law, no authority, nothing… Nothing was going to change this last year. Nothing. All that was left in me that day was rage and anger. The full force of my destructive nature as man released in a rage that near nothing was going to stop. That was until I saw Krystal crying coming home from school. It was at that point I knew I need to be strong and not allow her to see me like that. That I had to be the big brother she needed me to be and let her know that life would continue for all of us. That we would get through this. And we all did. Together.
Sorry that’s a long chapter for a short period of my life. It took a long time to write as it was very emotional for me to relive a lot of that. But at the same time to write it down also seems to feel better. Just to make a record of it. Even though only a few people will ever see it. Its something. In the coming years things seemed to get better and I’ll touch on some of that in the next part. As well as more recent periods that have again thrown my life in disarray. And new friendships that Today I know will never be as close as I once had with people, but none the less just as important to me now as the others once were then…
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