What I Learned from Mayco

Raymond Williams

Eldorado Mayco Emil Lafayette Williams was my grandfather. For obvious reasons, we just called him Mayco. He was unique and eccentric in proportion to his name, and I truly wish I had more time with him. I was only 17-years-old when he passed, but the older I get, the more I realize I learned a lot from Mayco.

Mayco was a Private in the US Army who fought in WWII. I don't know where he served, only that he got "blown out of a foxhole" during combat. He didn't talk about his time in the Army. Still, I think this time influenced him in ways beyond my comprehension and I think his service meant more to him than he shared. His name and rank are featured on the little plaque that commemorates him on a wall in a cemetery. He did not want a grave. Instead, he wanted to be cremated and his ashes spread in the desert.

Mayco loved the desert. It was his favorite place to be. As a boy who spent my life with the evergreen forests of Washington, Mayco's love for this arid landscape was strange to me. But things about Mayco I once found strange have had a way of revealing themselves to me later in life. The desert is harsh, serene, and subtly gorgeous in its mixed earth tones. The desert is recondite and, like Mayco, difficult for the uninitiated.

The lasting image I hold of my grandfather is him sitting at the head of the dining room table. Mayco would sit there, eyes closed, his right arm resting on the table, smoke rising from the cigarette in the ashtray before him, holding a permanent smile on his face. I swear this man knew the secret to life and wasn't telling anyone.

Mayco could find this state of bliss and tranquility regardless of what went on around him. The William's family house was often a madhouse: kids screaming and rough housing, grandma freaking out about everything, my older brother Gary stealing beer from the fridge... grandpa sat there with his eyes closed smiling. Never has a man said so much through stillness and silence.

What he was saying, which I had no way of understanding back then, was that he loved us. He loved us enough to allow us to be ourselves; enough to create that space for his family and then let them be free. I think he understood that freedom often looks like chaos and that love is accepting people for their true selves, even when that self is messy.

Mayco had a dark-featured, Charles Bronson look to him. He was tall with a mustache and head of still-black hair when he passed at 84. He did not talk much, if at all, about his family. He kept pictures of some relatives in a shoe box, but I can only remember seeing them once. There was one picture though, prominently displayed in the dining room behind where Mayco sat, of a Native American man in regalia. Pressed between the black and white photo and the glass was an old square of garment with Southwest styling. When asked, Mayco would tell people this was his ancestor.

Mayco was liberal, adventurous, and eccentric. He was never too old to try new things. Here was a man who designed and built the family home with his own hands, fought in a war, owned a used car lot, dabbled in real estate, and grew marijuana.

Mayco claimed to be a psychologist and carried around a business card that read "Mayco Williams. The Shrink's Shrink." I don't think he was ever certified so much as he was certifiable, but he truly enjoyed psychoanalyzing grandma when she was screaming about some random little thing.

Mayco was a man who decided, at age 81, that he would try meth just to "see what all the craze is about." After one experience he vowed to stick to his marijuana and whiskey.

One day I came back from school and there was a Sonoma County Sheriff's car sitting in the driveway. I thought I had done something wrong so I entered the house with fear, head hung low expecting the worst. Instead, grandpa called me to the table and introduced me to his "friend." To my surprise, the sheriff had come over not to arrest me, but to smoke a bowl with grandpa. Many different kinds of people sat around that dining room table and smoked weed with Mayco. I am happy to count myself among them.

I'll never forget the morning Mayco called me to the table. The night before Gary and I had gotten into his stash and I knew I was in trouble. When I sat down he handed me the little metal pipe he used to smoke out of. I looked at him, scared to death, certain it was a trap. He told me to go ahead and smoke, but don't ever steal from him again. Then he set some rules. If I wanted to smoke it had to be there at the table and nowhere else. And I could only smoke what he gave me.

At the time I thought my grandpa was the coolest old man ever. The reality is that he knew he couldn't control me and this was a sort of harm reduction or mitigation strategy. Additionally, grandpa used the time I spent there smoking with him to impart knowledge and wisdom. I learned more about life and people sitting around with Mayco smoking weed at that table then at any other point in my life. Mayco was, if nothing else, a true critical thinker, and I gleaned this ability from him there through the clouds of smoke we shared.

While Mayco's relationship with marijuana was long and recreational, his use in the years I knew him was also driven by his battles with cancer. I could never explain how strong my grandpa truly was. But I can tell you this: he fought cancer five times, and his record in those bouts was 4-1. Even more remarkable, when the fifth cancer killed him, he passed on his terms, not cancer’s.

The last nine months of Mayco's life were very bad for him and very hard on my grandma. The doctors had given him days to live, but he told them and everyone else that was "horse shit" and vowed he would not die until my father got out of prison. They said it was impossible. Mayco defied everything and lived in pure misery, in his bed, until my father got out. The day after my father got out of prison, Mayco died.

Mayco was the good patriarch. He was not demanding of people. He lived his life and allowed others to do the same. As I've learned in life, this is not easy to do. He showed me the value in tolerance, in stillness, and in silence. He showed me the value of building a space and giving that space to your loved ones. Mayco showed me that happiness is found in what you have to give, and that good company and a little weed smoke can keep people together. I truly loved him. Not because he was my grandpa, but because he was worth loving.

The last time I saw my grandpa he said "I'm proud of you son." I don't know what he could have been proud of back then. I was 16 years old, strung out on meth and running from the world. I was on the fast track to prison. Maybe he saw who I might become, or maybe he knew this would be the last thing he would get to say to me. But I do know this:  Even if he didn't really mean it when he said it, he would be proud of the man I became.

The night Mayco died I saw a wolf in the tree line of the forest outside my cell window. It came out, sniffed around in the grass and looked up at me. The next morning the guards notified me my grandpa had died. When the tears subsided, I thought of that old wolf sniffing around in the grass. I hope he found his way back to the desert.