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TTHEHE L LASTAST D DAYSAYS OFOF J JOHNOHN B BUDGENUDGEN J JRR..

Claire Readig and P.J. Druecke

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May 27th, 2006 I’VE NEVER BEEN HERE BEFORE I lie between my great uncle and aunt on ground nei-ther wet nor dry, comfortable nor uncomfortable. Six feet and 50-odd-years separates me from them. Even without another person around, this feels more embar-rassing than macabre. And odd. And though I didn’t notice anyone, someone could’ve been watching me. Uncertain, without resolve (even when unpredictable I’m never spontaneous) until I finally got down on my knees, shifted to my backside and reclined, looking to-ward the sky as if ready for sleep. This would pique a young mother’s interest as she looks out from behind her cream-colored drapes. Drapes that match the faded siding of the bungalow adjacent to and toward the back of the cemetery. Home. A toddler’s dirty-white play-set sits in the yard with a short slide, rounded steps, and cubbyholes the realm of make-believe. Other toys are scattered around, all as far from the grave-

The Last Days of John Budgen Jr.

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yard’s fence as possible. “The poor man is in mourn-ing” . . . she (my imagined audience) could have been thinking. She wouldn’t suspect that my earlier hesitation was only a habit, my habit of deliberating on things perfectly inconsequential, reasoning that which has no wrong or right. She thought, perhaps, that in my action there’s an answer, an answer to the big question, or at least a searching. But I’m not looking for anything—who thinks there’s an answer to life nowadays? I don’t . . . or maybe I am . . .

This cemetery is a ridiculous place to rest-in-peace, sur-rounded by a Sears Automotive shop to the south, a mini strip-mall to the north, and the din of twelve lanes of traffic to the west. The cemetery appears anonymous unless you continue down the dirt path where a cheap


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sign, printed by the looks of it at the Kinko’s just up the street, indicates this is the Town of Milwaukee Union Cemetery. Rust, icing for the sign’s paltriness, seeps down from where two bolts secure it to a weathered post. The burnt-orange stains look like gravity-inspired Rorschach tests—nature’s commentary on the “final state” . . . or at least its upkeep? The cemetery’s name, on the other hand, alludes to larger-than-life connections—between the departed and their loved ones, between spirit and matter and, back in the day, between a nation divided North and South. Plots are still available, if one is to believe the sign—even though the Town of Milwaukee ceased to exist in 1955 when the last of its acreage was taken over by the City. It’s unlikely that anyone currently in the market for a burial plot would choose to await eternity here, unless one fancied death as a modest sort of limbo without proper, or rather, with outdated jurisdiction. The grass is withering; the ground thin and porous un-derfoot as if dead bodies came and went like vapor-ous vampires. Who were all these people? There’s no mausoleum, no stately vaults. Nobody of any impor-tance is buried here. “To be Remembered is to be Im-portant,” that’s what grand papa Brullier used to say.


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We glean the beginnings of John Budgen’s blog-

ging in his To-Do Lists. The Lists are a wholesale

compendium of life’s repetitious chores—spanning

nearly fifteen years! The Lists are banal, the act of

collecting them, we’ll just say . . . odd. We know

from looking at the lists that sometime around the

fourth anniversary of his mother’s death, John be-

gan compiling his memorial to her. Amidst the

stacks of scribbled reminders we find a page with

the words toothpaste, d. floss, cleanser (or possibly

cleaner), and photo album. In parenthesis next to

‘photo album,’ Mum. The latter appears to have

been highlighted, though all that remains of the

bright-yellow emphasis is a dusty smudge. We can

picture John Jr., list-in-hand, holed up in the Sta-

tionery aisle of the neighborhood Walgreen’s. His

indecisiveness churning by the time he selects the

over-sized maroon photo album for his project.

The receipt, which should have been—but was

not—tucked in the back of the album (as he did

with all of his books), could have been misplaced

as John rummaged through his collection of


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memorabilia and began pushing the family photos

onto the bright white pages. John arranged the

photos in chronological order. This display of lin-

ear thinking was at odds with his usual, more me-

andering ways. That was five years ago. John

Budgen Jr. was forty-seven years old.

John’s Lists offer additional nuggets of insight.

The pocket-worn paper dating from 1999, for ex-

ample, has the reminder to sort found shopping

lists. The lists do not tell us that for most of his life

John Budgen ignored the Jr. at the end of his

name. Or that even as a child no one called him Jr.

Or why when it could be no accident, nearing

fifty-years old, John included the Jr. in the title to

his blog, JohnBudgenJr.blogspot. But we’re getting

ahead of ourselves. . . .

John will tell us himself that he was a bastard,

the Jr. being a misnomer. He was named after his

grandfather (John Brullier) and his grandmother’s

father (Frank Budgen Jr.), and ultimately, Frank’s

father Frank Budgen. John Budgen Jr.’s name was

pieced together at a time of intense trauma. His


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mother, Rachel, was not in control at this time of

her life, but her heart was in the right place. She at-

tempted to bestow a sense of accomplishment,

fame even, upon her unfortunate child. Still, the ir-

rational bastardization that gave the infant his

name lingered in John’s moods, outlook, and life.


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May 27th, 2006 (continued) Mum told me the cemetery was located north of the Bayshore shopping center and that some Budgens were buried here but we never made the time to visit. Great Uncle Charles and Great Aunt Mim are buried here—Mum, thankfully, is not. Charles and Miriam Budgen, I never met them; I can’t think of a single thing I know about them except Charles is my mother’s mother’s brother. I’m not sure why they’re buried here without another Budgen in sight. I try to remember any story I might have heard about Uncle or Aunt, but mostly I look at the headstones: Rosencreuz, Gruenwald, Stabelfeldt, Smith, Struck; Mil-waukee was a magnet for German immigrants. Carved deep into granite beneath the name Reinke, the final words, “Ich bin nicht. Wir sind immer. Unvergessen,” are surprisingly legible. Ich bin nicht … Ich bin nicht … I am not? When I get home I type the epitaph into Google and the translation reads, “I am not. We are always. Not forgotten.” “We?” How expansive Herr Reinke’s thinking circa 1874? It’s hard to know if “we” means simply husband and wife, parents and children,


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or perhaps casts a larger, more humanist net over neighbors and distant kin—or even you, me, everyone we know and everyone they know, and on and on, right? (There’s a new indie movie that Claire was tell-ing me about, You and Me and Everyone We Know. She said it was supposed to be good.) In a little over a hundred years, everyone alive right now will have joined the growing family of human dead regardless of heritage, disposition, or desire. That’s both funny and reassuring, in a leveling sort of way -- the ultimate de-segregation policy. Could this be the “we” Reinke refers to? The name Budgen still doesn’t fit in. When the low clouds begin to break for the sun to shine through, this is the sign I should move on and leave without feeling any connection to Charles, Mim, Reinke, or any of the names or words on headstones bathed now in the bright glare or dark shadow of late-afternoon light. If I return I will return. [spacing]

Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

where John spent most of

his life is “conservative,

pragmatic, stubborn, and


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myopic,” to quote him from a 2007 entry. Continu-

ing his calculating assessment of hometown per-

sonality, Jr. goes on:

These characteristics serve the region’s inhabitants well. People from the upper Midwest absorb life’s hard facts, draw them out, repress them if necessary, and mold them into experience. Much like the long winter itself. Generations have cultivated this moral landscape; those with opposing tastes move on.

Honesty, in this context is not confrontational or in-your-face. The drama surrounding truth is subdued; difficult situations play out over time lessening the intensity of day-to-day interaction while creating an ominous tex-ture to life. Honesty is an imprecise commodity, I guess that’s my point. It has different sensibilities, can be situ-ational. And there are geographical biases; East Coast honesty has a different flavor than Midwest honesty. The former is brazen, even abrasive, while the latter sneaks at the periphery. Blue collar, pink collar, white collar, there are myriad shadings as to how one under-stands, say, “an honest day’s work.”


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Rachel Brullier was the daughter of John and

Suzanne (née Budgen) Brullier, and the grand-

daughter of Edmunton and Eliza (née Patch) Brul-

lier. The Brullier and Patch families can be traced to

Germantown—a near-north village-outpost of Mil-

waukee—dating back to the 1870’s. Of French/

German descent, the family prospered while

blending into the community as modest, hard-

working truck-farmers. John (GrandPa) Brullier left

farm-life for bigger opportunities. This took him no

further than Waukesha—a larger small-town ap-

pendage of Milwaukee. Rachel Brullier, like her

son John Jr., was born in Waukesha (1940 and 1956,

respectively). Rachel was independent, rebellious,

and anxious to leave the small-town repressiveness

that was her birthright. Then came John Jr., an un-

wanted pregnancy. A criminal pregnancy. Her

practical, loving family became an asset. The

deeply-ingrained sense of stoic perseverance sewn

generations earlier on the farm became her hope

and compass.


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Rachel moved to Milwaukee when John Jr. was

four years old. This move, much tailored from her

earlier plans of escape, had to suffice. For there,

Rachel lived out the rest of her life. In his first blog

entry of substance, John wrote, “My mother’s life

unfolds as a long-endured tragedy punctuated by

moments of surprisingly carefree joy. The hard

things she kept to herself, the happy things she

shared with whomever was at hand.”


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Although Jr.’s family could not be called ordi-

nary, they were typical in their thoughtless accu-

mulation of mementos. Theirs was a family-

tradition wary of nostalgia’s meaning for the here

and now. In this regard, his family was more typi-

cal—and more disorganized—than most. While the

idea of compiling a memorial to Mum was not out

of character for John, the busy-work was; his

hobby was reading, or when lazy, watching TV—

his engagement with the world, internal.

Despite all the above, motivated by a middle-aged,

melancholic sense of duty John Jr. gathered up a

couple plastic bags, a smallish box, and a handful

of folders and spread their contents out on the ta-

ble to sort through his family’s pictorial history be-

fore him. Sepia toned photos from a hundred years

ago transitioned to the standard b&w format of the

50’s. Some of the latter have names worked into the

margins; Aunt Gertie and Uncle Harold appear

multiple times. But who were Gert and Harry? Jr.

wasn’t sure.

John makes his first appearance at the age of

four or five.


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Looking at pictures of

himself he felt the for-

eignness of the earlier

images replaced by the

vague memory of being

there, of having lived the

image in front of him. (This, according to conversa-

tion he’d had with Claire. A conversation on the

topic of contradictions as she remembers it.) John

Jr. saw his mother through child’s eyes, the young

eyes looking back at him from the photos. He sat

up a little straighter in his chair and for a moment

his stance to the world softened. Years of residual

tension faded. Jr. tried to recall the first roll of film

he’d ever shot.

A couple of distinctively faded photos from the

early days of color film depict empty living rooms

and tables with food but no people.

The last photos John sorts are from his personal

archive. Old friends, lovers, and then his current

friends form a silent parade. As the photos become

more familiar, Jr. becomes sadder and more nostal-


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gic (paraphrasing the aforementioned conversation

again). Abruptly, in 2003, the photos end when, it

can be assumed, digital technology prevailed. Jr.

tried to recall the last roll of film he’d shot.

John’s interest in the photos led to the purchase

of a digital scanner and shortly after that the pro-

ject became a blog where Jr. wrote about Mum,

posted personal artifacts, and chopped and diced

the family history with equal amounts of love, rev-

erence, confusion, and scorn. Without totally losing

track of the original inspiration, the blog took the

form of a long, curious detour—“W. G. Sebald

strolls through cyberspace,” HTMLGi-

ant.com remarked on their list of recommended

links. This course was well-suited to John Jr.’s per-

sonality.


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August 25th, 2005 WHO IS THIS BUDGEN? My last name comes from my mother’s side of the fam-ily. Budgen. I’m a bastard. Mum named me after my great great grandfather, supposedly because he was a friend of James Joyce’s. My mother was raped and I was the child of that crime. No one was ever con-victed, though there were rumors in the family that Mum knew who my father was. These rumors, never admitted to, were the most disturbing to me. I learned of the story, parts of it anyway, when I was about 17 years-old at a time when the pain and uncertainty of sup-posed adulthood was threatening to break me. Why is life cruel like that? I broke. (But that’s a story for an-other time, I’m just not in the mood). Frank Budgen, Great Grandfather Budgen was, and is, the most fa-mous person in our family. Mum wanted to connect me, and herself I imagine, to something larger than the painful world she lived in when I was born. Grasping back in time was her hope for the future, future success. Ironically, the bulk of critical assessment does not shine favorably on grandfather Budgen (a painter of minor importance at best, exploitative of his friendships at


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worst), but she would not have known this, nor would she have cared. There are letters from Joyce to Budgen, and vice versa, that prove Joyce thought highly of my great great grandfather. Nearly even worshipped him—no small feat. And though Mum never met our ancestor-of-note she was proud of her family’s brush with fame. Who authors spam? Is there a certain demographic that types out such weirdly transparent missives in the hopes of financial gain? It would have been a great medium for Joyce, broadcasting his forcefully playful language to a random public angry at the intrusion. Dear Croin’ hal We need halp more halp ‘n at. A pickle to stick in the dish of whipped slippery don’t neglect the time do what’s right. Sip send Sip send. We’re round and round but need to save wha takes us round needless to say we need to save with almighty might and money the whole round dearness or if not then never a’gn seek nor find. So help the ladish sentry do which is right. Wish to help? Wish more for right … Arrr’l


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needs more ‘n at. The scale o’justice ha lost ‘ts counter-poise. Make the table. Set to set two and through and through. No night. Sip send. Sip send? If there’s a modern-day Joyce plying her craft via email con-jobs we’ll never know -- lost as it in the mountain-sized digital mire of male-enhancement and black-market-software notices. There is, really, no hope for the spam folder.


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“Great things are born of tragedy,” was another

saying handed down the family tree, (this one re-

portedly from gam Soochie). But in John Jr.’s case it

was the moderately heroic idea that someone

(more or less) normal could grow up from an ex-

treme, horrific inception. Jr. grew to join the ranks

of the average, and aspired to nothing more. Life

taught John that the ability to achieve great things

was wrapped within the suspension of disbelief.

Lacking this skill, he adjusted his ambitions ac-

cordingly. After his death, his friends would toast

Jr.’s dithering, introspective nature without ac-

knowledging (at least out-loud) the sadness it fos-

tered. Like many others, Jr. was not particularly

happy. He struggled with a sense of isolation en-

demic for the time. This, even as technologic trends

entering the 21st century would enable more and

more individuals to reach ever more people. John

Budgen Jr., true to his nature, was part of the

crowd. Jr. shared his personal musings online with

an anonymous public that returned the favor by,

for the most part, not paying any attention.


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When Jr. wrote about his visit to the Union

Cemetery he’d been alive for 50 years. Two years

later, he still felt young—at least not old. But his

days were numbered; “the long road” (a cliché

picked up from his mother whose use of the term

was ironically appropriate to her own short, tu-

multuous life) was coming to an abrupt end. When

John Jr. posted his entry about an unusually pow-

erful rainstorm he had just twenty-two days to live.

There is no indication that he knew this, though

some say that the entry, with its apocalyptic refer-

ences, smacks of foreboding. Prescience, even. One

thing for certain, John’s Great Flood entry, as it has

come to be known, would raise his anonymous lit-

tle blog, for good or bad, into the public spotlight.

JOHN BUDGEN JR. 1956-2008 The Last Days of John Budgen Jr., A portrait in installments. Dated entries from JohnBudgenJr.blogspot.com. Entries and Images Appear Courtesy Of Claire Readig.

Image Credits: Untitled (Family Tree drawing), Unknown, Untitled (Union Cemetery) J.B.Jr. c.2006, Untitled (Fence) Unknown, Untitled (Houses drawing), Unknown, Untitled, (Moose), Unknown, Untitled, (John Jr.) Rachel Brullier c. 1967, Untitled (Foggy Highway), J.B.Jr. c. 2007. Editorial Assistance: J Star & Company, Design: Ship of Fools Production [email protected] PUBLISHED BY ASW, CHAPTER ONE, COPYRIGHT ASW 2008

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