There was never an argument about turkey vs ham on Thanksgiving. It was turkey, no matter what. Ever since I was a kid, just seeing turkey on the shelf brought to mind the image of sliced white bread slathered in creamy mayo... Layers of sliced white turkey meat topped with cranberry sauce, finished with iceberg lettuce, sprinkled with salt and pepper. And Bob. Standing at the kitchen counter next to the tin-foil wrapped carcass of the bird. Grinning. 
He liked the leftovers better than the first time through. 
See, my family was evenly divided, white meat or dark. We all liked dark better, and Bob liked the white. It was fair. We stuffed ourselves on legs and wings, and he got the breasts. He would feast for days. I think he actually ate more of the rest of the dinner on Thanksgiving night; the potatoes, beans, stuffing, relish, and pie - lots of pumpkin pie with piles of whipped cream. But he went easy on the white meat so's there'd be lots for sandwiches. My brothers and I wanted nothing to do with the left over white meat, since we'd wanted nothing to do with it the first go round. And it's plenty hard to make sandwiches from the dark meat, it being all chunky and sinewy. Can't really slice it well for layering. 
But white meat was the queen of the turkey. The prime to the rib. The meat on the bones. I think for Bob it had something to do with his childhood, with poverty, with being lucky enough to have a turkey at all. 
As a kid, and a teen, I didn't appreciate his hunger. The lusty way he ate those sandwiches, not even taking time to sit down, just munching them down on the spot. I can appreciate the act of devouring left-overs. We almost always had more than enough. He made sure of it. And he thoroughly enjoyed it while it lasted. And he made it last a long time. 
So, seeing a turkey - I hardly consider the meal itself. I just think about the sandwiches later. And remember Bob. 

Bob was not deaf. He was never deaf, until maybe the end. 
When you can't hear what people are saying it's scary.
My right ear rings all the time from a scuba diving incident, going too deep when I had a head cold. 
Not seeing well is different than not hearing well.
Bob used to put the menu on the floor, literally, when he had forgotten his glasses, so that he could read the print. I lost my near vision by the time I was 45. I get frantic now when I cannot find my glasses - I feel helpless, powerless, and vulnerable. Very vulnerable. When you cannot see, people can read for you. They can tell you what it says, the newspaper, the menu, the text on your phone.
When you can't hear? 
They don't have the time, the patience to figure out how to communicate. They wave their hands around, they make gestures, they make faces.
But everyone gestures differently. Their hands go this way, their eyes, that. You are trying to follow what their motions are meant to communicate.
Bob wasn't deaf. He would reach up and turn down the volume on his hearing aids when Mom got too loud, too angry. At first it was an unconscious gesture, an afterthought almost. After a while, it was intentional, more than passive-aggressive. It was a way of fighting back against her violent emotions.
That's how I know he could still hear. 
He could hear until the very end.
People's words are one thing - their gestures another. When people's eyes are communicating, there can be no mistake. Impatience. Frustration. Recognition. Fear.
Language always comes down to the eyes. Bob could hear violence. 
Perhaps Bob could even smell it.

I've got Brahm's 4th on repeat. The CD is getting grooves from overplay, I swear. The moment I heard it being played on our local classical radio station, I ordered it online, downloaded it and then ordered hard copies for my brothers. It put me instantly in another place and time, and even someone else's time.
I didn't know what it was, really. I heard the opening strains and thought, "That's the music - that's what it is...". Bob listened to it more than any other music, ensconced in his favorite chair. I even remember it from as far back as the house in North Hollywood on La Maida St. 916 La Maida St. I looked it up on Google Earth once. They'd ruined it with hedges our front -  you could barely see the leaded glass windows.
In that living room, not nearly as big as the one on Romero Canyon in Montecito, Bob would sit in a white leather easy chair in front of the fireplace. The stereo would be pretty loud, because of his hearing problems. You have to realize we are talking about a stereo, an LP on a turntable with a needle vibrating in the grooves, a flat disc of black vinyl going around and around a slender metal spindle. Setting the needle down without scratching or skipping was an artform learned by the time I was 10. There was no remote, no digital laser, no playing through from the beginning to the end - you had to actually get up out of your chair and turn the damned thing over. America was more fit then. 
The 4th is called "Le Tragique". It is famous for its opening measures that are quite different than any symphony before its time. Again, you have to realize that when it was performed, there were very few if any recordings - no one heard it before they went to see it live. There was no instant rewind or repeat. It was an in-the-moment experience. The symphony is in Em, very emotional and sad right from the start. It instantly brings images into your mind, if you are willing. I always see the same series: Bob in his chair, thinking, eyes closed, pipe smoke wafting; then a sweeping vista of the lettuce fields in Salinas, the setting sun behind the purple coast range, golden light between the dark, wet rows; a young man sitting in the back of a '32 Ford truck, gazing in wonder, already making films in his head. 
The music, the images never fail to bring tears to my eyes, tears that can be quite inconvenient when I am driving or trying to talk on my cell phone. But, I play it non-stop anyway. I relish the experience, I crave it. I hear the horns in my head, the strings as I shower, and sometimes, while driving, lift my right hand, conducting an unseen orchestra.
This must be something like what happened in Bob's mind, I think, the cabbage picker from Racine, making films in his head. 

Bob was a big Green Bay fan. He and my brother loved watching football together. They'd be out in my dad's huge office, a beautifully renovated 2-car garage with a solid wall of paned glass windows and wood stove. Very Swiss looking. On any Saturday or Sunday morning we could hear them hollering and screaming at the TV. Growing up with 2 football fanatics (where the word 'fan' comes from, btw) I just assumed everyone who watches sports on TV spends the time jumping up and down while yelling at the screen. Rick, my younger brother, could easily be heard swearing viciously at the set. Bob, on the other hand, rarely if ever used foul language. He didn't have to - a look was enough to make  your head drop to your chest in humiliation for your own stupidity. So when he watched football, instead of swearing, he would clench his pipe tightly between his teeth and mutter, "You idiot... you moron...", or the rare, "You dumbshit.... what a schmuck." But it was slung at the ref or linebacker or tight end with such contempt that I'm quite sure it was heard all the way, over the airwaves, and down onto the field. When things were not going according to the plan he had in his head, he would jump to his feet, leaning intensely into the face of the television set, and yell mightily, "Jesus Christ! What an idiot!"
He had grown up in Wisconsin, picking and hurling cabbages in the snow for a nickel a day to help support his mother, Hazel, after his father's death. The Packers, named for the firms that sent those cabbages by railroad car to destinations around the U.S., would practice outside Racine, their winter headquarters. Bob said he would sit up on the snow-covered split rail fences to watch the team slide around in the muddy slush, near freezing, huffing steam, slinging epitaphs at each other. It gave him a sense of belonging, and provided role models for later in life. He was a tall, skinny kid of 14 or so at the time. The guys would have been wearing leather helmets and woolen uniforms. Many years  later, watching the LA Rams, he would call the players wimps when they couldn't handle the ball in snowy weather away from home. 
I watched some football with him and my brother occasionally. Mom would send me out with a plate of cookies to assuage the mighty Green Bay fans in their fanatical ardor for the leather-clad gladiators. I usually lasted a few minutes before the din wore me out and I returned to the safety of the women's quarters, the kitchen. But I have to say, I was impressed. It was the only time I ever saw Bob that het' up about anything.