This guy I saw on the Donahue show said if you laugh all the time you can heal yourself from fatal diseases and that some guy healed himself by watching the Three Stooges and the Marx Brothers. Well, I guess I’ll just have to die, because I could never laugh over something so stupid as that. Really, Monk knew what he was doing and made the story funny to make us laugh like that—he was always a kidder. But after Barney died right after the dog and Mary Lou, Monk caved in. All that good stuff he learned at the AA about the higher power, which helped Monk quit drinking and smoking, the higher power Monk chose to call God—it all quit working. Monk was no dummy. He could see Tootie was just practicing the Hippocratic oath with no real feeling. Although she tried to cover it up, Tootie went into a depression, too. She didn’t feel right at home and she didn’t want to go back to Africa. She put up a front, but Monk could see through it. No matter what Tootie did for him or what Pug did for him, he just sort of dried up inside. Pug was with him when he died. Pug was with Barney when he died and with Mary Lou. Three in five years. Pug said Monk was rational right up to the end. He didn’t say nothing about Jesus taking him to heaven. What he said was, “Ain’t this a bitch?” After he said that, Pug said he rolled over and died. Maybe Pug saw it wrong. Maybe Monk closed his eyes and prayed for his own salvation, for the forgiveness of his sins. Late at night when I can’t sleep, I think of Monk up in heaven with Barney and Mary Lou and the whole family short of Pa, who died cursing God.

My doctor gave me an operation because my lower eyelids were growing up and going into my eye. The pain was horrible. Tootie did the operation over, to get all of the eyelid roots out, but they still sprout up and stick me in the eye and I have to tape my eye open, put drops in it, and take aspirin. Sometimes the pain is so bad I just have to lie on my bed and hold a picture of Jesus to my heart and pray for Him to come and take me, or pray for Him to save Tootie’s soul. She has done good things for the world, but only through the grace of Jesus are we saved. Our righteous acts are as filthy rags. Everybody knows that one.