Ed

Most of you know by now that I have a book coming out in four days, and today I was intending to mention some of the nice things people have been saying about it, but all that is on hold for a bit because I want to tell you about my brother-in-law, Ed Williams.

Ed died Tuesday night, a few days after having a heart attack. He’s Eddie in his obituary, and most people called him that, but in the family we called him Ed. He was married to my late sister, Brenda. Some of you might remember reading about her in THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM. Brenda and Ed were married 43 years and raised three good kids, now grown. The kids were there at the end to say goodbye.

I was in first or second grade when Ed and Brenda got married. I remember slicked-back hair, a dangling cigarette, a blue Plymouth Fury. Kind of a badass. He grew up to be a different kind of badass. He and my dad loved each other’s company, maybe because they were so similar—they could build anything and fix anything. Ed once built a smoker out of a hot water heater. The smoked cheese was incredible.

Ed and Brenda and the kids lived in Jesup, Georgia, a town of about 10,000 not far from where I grew up on the coast. Ed worked for the city for 51 years and was the public works director for much of that time. He was the one who got the call when a tree fell in the street or a storm drain clogged or the trash truck didn’t come. It was rare that half an hour went by in their house without the phone ringing.

He played kind of the same role in our family—the one we all leaned on to keep everything running. A few years after my dad died, my mom moved into a trailer on Ed and Brenda’s property. His mother lived in another trailer on the other side of their big front yard. Ed spent part of every day checking on his actual mom and his unofficial one, making sure everything in their homes was in working order, and along the way giving two old women someone to talk to.

Ed was country strong. My mom had back surgery a few years before she died, and at the beginning the dosage of painkillers was too much for her. Alix and I would have to walk her to the bathroom when she needed to go. One time we did our little three-way dance down the hall—me walking backwards, holding her hands, and Alix behind her for backup. But the bathroom was too small for all of us to fit. I got out of the way, and when I did, Mama just melted to the floor, right on top of Alix’s feet and wedged against the toilet.

She was dead weight and probably 200 pounds by then. Alix and I had no chance to pick her up. So we called Ed. He came over, sized things up, bent sideways around Alix, and from that awkward angle, reached under my mom’s arms and deadlifted her onto the toilet seat. It was one of the greatest feats of strength I’ve ever seen.

He went back to the same old favorites again and again. He probably watched every Jason Bourne movie 50 times. He would read the Bass Pro Shops catalog until the pages fell out. He loved his old blue Chevy step-side truck.

After Brenda died, he started dating Heddy Hires. One of the only times I saw him blush was when he told me about their daily routine: he’d get home from work, take a shower, go over to her house for supper … and they’d watch the DVRed episode of that day’s THE YOUNG AND THE RESTLESS.

His health wasn’t good his last few years. But he had people to check on him the way he once checked on them. Two of his kids lived within sight of his house, and the third just a few miles away.

A few times, Ed and I went to a classic buffet place in Jesup called Jones Kitchen. Incredible Southern food, long communal tables. Ed couldn’t get through two bites of a pork chop without somebody coming over to say hello. He lived in Jesup his whole adult life and worked for the city almost as long. He became the cliché—the guy who everyone in town knows, the guy who knows everyone in town. I guess there might have been somebody in Jesup who didn’t like Ed. If there is, I never met him.

I think the key to being a good fixer—someone who can solve somebody else’s problems—is to first be a good listener. As powerful as Ed was, his greatest strength might have been that he heard what you were saying, and if there was something he could do about it, he would. We are going to remember him fondly down in Jesup this weekend. I don’t know how the afterlife works, but I hope he can hear us.

—TT