I writing this for myself. I can’t put it on Facebook, because too many of my family are grieving, and they might think it too irreverent.
Friday, my uncle was in hospital with what appeared to be flu-like symptoms. He was treated, and after a few hours, his symptoms seemed to subside. He went home with my aunt, and later decided that a trip to the casino would make him feel better. So, off they went, and he came home $600 richer.
During the night, however, he began to feel worse, and so they went back to the hospital. His white blood cell count was very high, and they took him to ICU. At eleven in the morning, he died. Sparse details, I know, but that’s all I’ve heard so far.
There were frantic efforts to track down my cousin, his son, and we were able to get him there just before his father died. I doubt that my uncle was conscious of his son’s presence, but at least my cousin saw him alive one last time, for what that’s worth.
My uncle was the character of the family. You know the one: didn’t care much what people thought of him, cursed, smoked Camel unfiltered and drank a lot. He worked all his life in a factory, and spent the last few years of his working life as shop steward for the union. He loved good food, whisky, bourbon and socializing. He also read a lot of poetry, and could recite for hours, everything from classics to the obscurist poets around. He read avidly, and I never saw him unable to answer a question at Trivial Pursuit (games between us came down to whoever went first – we gave that up pretty quickly). My grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary coincided with his 50th birthday (he’s my uncle by marriage; he married my father’s younger sister), and my uncle put on a huge party. There were at least a hundred people there, and my uncle was proudly showing off his new earring. He loved the Rolling Stones, and loved to tell the story of my father going to an early concert of theirs, but being unable to remember the name of the band until he saw it in the morning newspaper. He also loved Tina Turner, and saw her perform a number of times.
He fought in the Korean War, although doing the math suggests that he would have only been 16 when he joined up. He never talked about it (we heard about it only from my aunt), but he received a pension from the British Army, and had medical discharge papers and a handful of medals to go with them. Everyone’s seen the line of scars on his leg, but he’s always claimed that it was from a lawnmower accident (the image of my uncle, born and bred in east London, mowing anything is somewhat incongruous). There’s a vague suspicion that he came back from the war with a different name than the one he left with, although we have no proof.
I’m sad that he’s gone, obviously. He was “only” in his mid-70’s, and still pretty active. But it’s hard to say that he didn’t live life as he wanted, and I think that’s something to be admired. He was never wealthy, but the image I have of him is sitting in his deep armchair, a drink in one hand and holding court to a roomful of people. He was warm and caustic and fearless and endlessly teasing. He was the favourite uncle of everyone in my generation of the family, and now he’s gone.
My last remaining blood relative that I’m close to is an uncle, my father’s 90-year-old brother. He turns 91 next month and is still healthy. But once he goes, there will go my last real blood link to my family. I have a passel of cousins in California and even more distant relations in Arkansas, none of whom I would recognize if they walked up and bit me. Uncle passings always seem a little more sad to me for this reason.