My uncle died last week; he was 94.
He had been wanting to die for a year since his common-law wife died in February 2019; he was simply undone by regret and grief.
With a long life behind him and a desire to die, I cannot possibly be sad for my uncle.
What I have felt is a profound remembrance of my childhood of which my uncle played a strange part.
Both my mother and father came from large Catholic families.
My mother was the youngest of six children; my father was the second youngest of seven children.
Both my mother and father were older parents; my mom was 35 and my dad was 31 when I was born.
This means that most of the cousins whom I remember as a child, the ones I played with, were actually the grandchildren of my aunts and uncles.
My uncle who passed was divorced from the mother of his children and lived with my grandma when I was a kid.
What this meant is that every visit, every week, to grandma's house was also a visit to Uncle Ed.
I remember the shed behind the house that we weren't supposed to go into but that held a magical allure for us because Uncle Ed kept his gardening stuff there (and maybe dangerous stuff, or at least that is what we surmised.)
I remember watching my dad and Ed work in the garden together.
While they worked, my brother and I regularly jumped in the compost bin that was behind the garden, right by the fence that demarcated grandma's property from the drive-in where my dad had worked as a teenager.
I remember thinking my Uncle Ed was old then.
He was in his 50s, I guess, but he had lost his hair, and he just kind of always had a grumpy personality.
(Although given what his childhood home had been like, I suppose that isn't so unexpected.)
He drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and would give me and my brother sips of the last dregs of it, which was always a thrill when we were kids.
(Now, in the midst of a pandemic and given my germaphobe OCD, the idea of drinking my uncle's backwash is almost more than I can stand.)
I remember not fully understanding the situation between Uncle Ed and Aunt Louise when I was a kid. (Aunt Louise the girlfriend and eventual common-law wife, not Aunt Louise the sister of Uncle Ed who was my actual by-blood aunt.)
But I didn't spend a whole lot of time wondering about it.
She was just always there if there was any kind of family gathering or fried chicken dinner.
(Of course, I didn't fully understand that Ed's ex-wife lived one house away from my grandma. I remember being a little confused because in my head, I always thought of Aunt Louise as his wife.)
Next to my grandma's house was a run-down shack in the midst of overgrown weeds and grass that we were not allowed to enter.
One time, Uncle Ed put a sheet on and ran out of it to try to scare us kids.
My dad and uncle owned rental property when I was a kid, so we often saw my uncle when my dad cut grass at the apartment.
It wasn't uncommon for them to work on a project together.
Uncle Ed helped my parents finish the basement in my childhood home.
They bought a home together to rent that had at least seven layers of wallpaper on the walls.
I can still smell the heady mix of vinegar and adhesive when we went there to attempt to scrape it all away.
I don't know that I thought much about how he and my dad were brothers, despite a 17-year age difference, but I can still hear him say my dad's name.
Usually, it seemed like he was saying, "Now Donnie," as the preface of something my dad was doing in a way that Ed didn't agree with.
When I was older, in college, my parents would take me to eat at a VFW Post, where we would often eat dinner with Uncle Ed and Aunt Louise.
I spent many a Friday night in their company during college.
I can't think back on my childhood without Uncle Ed feeling like a pretty significant part of it.
And that doesn't sadden me as much as make me realize how much further it is in my past than what I'm usually aware of.
It is like a time period stays the same in my memory until someone from that time period dies, and then that time period somehow destabilizes.
The memory is still there, but slightly more fuzzy, the edges a little blurrier.
He had been wanting to die for a year since his common-law wife died in February 2019; he was simply undone by regret and grief.
With a long life behind him and a desire to die, I cannot possibly be sad for my uncle.
What I have felt is a profound remembrance of my childhood of which my uncle played a strange part.
Both my mother and father came from large Catholic families.
My mother was the youngest of six children; my father was the second youngest of seven children.
Both my mother and father were older parents; my mom was 35 and my dad was 31 when I was born.
This means that most of the cousins whom I remember as a child, the ones I played with, were actually the grandchildren of my aunts and uncles.
My uncle who passed was divorced from the mother of his children and lived with my grandma when I was a kid.
What this meant is that every visit, every week, to grandma's house was also a visit to Uncle Ed.
I remember the shed behind the house that we weren't supposed to go into but that held a magical allure for us because Uncle Ed kept his gardening stuff there (and maybe dangerous stuff, or at least that is what we surmised.)
I remember watching my dad and Ed work in the garden together.
While they worked, my brother and I regularly jumped in the compost bin that was behind the garden, right by the fence that demarcated grandma's property from the drive-in where my dad had worked as a teenager.
I remember thinking my Uncle Ed was old then.
He was in his 50s, I guess, but he had lost his hair, and he just kind of always had a grumpy personality.
(Although given what his childhood home had been like, I suppose that isn't so unexpected.)
He drank Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and would give me and my brother sips of the last dregs of it, which was always a thrill when we were kids.
(Now, in the midst of a pandemic and given my germaphobe OCD, the idea of drinking my uncle's backwash is almost more than I can stand.)
I remember not fully understanding the situation between Uncle Ed and Aunt Louise when I was a kid. (Aunt Louise the girlfriend and eventual common-law wife, not Aunt Louise the sister of Uncle Ed who was my actual by-blood aunt.)
But I didn't spend a whole lot of time wondering about it.
She was just always there if there was any kind of family gathering or fried chicken dinner.
(Of course, I didn't fully understand that Ed's ex-wife lived one house away from my grandma. I remember being a little confused because in my head, I always thought of Aunt Louise as his wife.)
Next to my grandma's house was a run-down shack in the midst of overgrown weeds and grass that we were not allowed to enter.
One time, Uncle Ed put a sheet on and ran out of it to try to scare us kids.
My dad and uncle owned rental property when I was a kid, so we often saw my uncle when my dad cut grass at the apartment.
It wasn't uncommon for them to work on a project together.
Uncle Ed helped my parents finish the basement in my childhood home.
They bought a home together to rent that had at least seven layers of wallpaper on the walls.
I can still smell the heady mix of vinegar and adhesive when we went there to attempt to scrape it all away.
I don't know that I thought much about how he and my dad were brothers, despite a 17-year age difference, but I can still hear him say my dad's name.
Usually, it seemed like he was saying, "Now Donnie," as the preface of something my dad was doing in a way that Ed didn't agree with.
When I was older, in college, my parents would take me to eat at a VFW Post, where we would often eat dinner with Uncle Ed and Aunt Louise.
I spent many a Friday night in their company during college.
I can't think back on my childhood without Uncle Ed feeling like a pretty significant part of it.
And that doesn't sadden me as much as make me realize how much further it is in my past than what I'm usually aware of.
It is like a time period stays the same in my memory until someone from that time period dies, and then that time period somehow destabilizes.
The memory is still there, but slightly more fuzzy, the edges a little blurrier.
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