Uncle Bill
I have known my Uncle Bill all my life. He was a late in life baby and his sister, my Mom, was very young when I was born. As a result, only eight years separate My Uncle Bill from me. It’s not that those eight years made us close because we haven’t been. My family moved away from the little Ohio river town of Martins Ferry when I was about two years old and although we returned to visit frequently, the distance was enough to keep me from knowing my uncle that well. I remember him as kind of a cocky teenager and very athletic. He was a baseball, football and wrestling star and went to University of Tennessee on a football scholarship.Through the years as a child, I would see Uncle Bill on Thanksgiving or Christmas most years. He settled in Tennessee after college and has lived there since. Now, and for the past 25 years or so, we get together on the first weekend in August for our family reunion. I see him several times there, then no more for the rest of the year. We make sporadic phone calls to each other and always say we should do that more often but we never do.
This year though, things have been different. Since last June, Uncle Bill and I have spoken quite often. Circumstances have dictated that and I wished they were enjoyable and celebratory events that brought us together but they have not been. Last year, Uncle Bill lost both of his sisters, his only siblings, within less than three months of each other. He was also diagnosed with early stages of dementia. The illness and death of my mom kept he and I in touch via phone and he stayed at my house for the weekend of her funeral service. I won’t forget how confused he was that weekend. It started with his air travel here and continued all three days of his stay and right up until I walked him back into the airport. He was not the same Uncle Bill I have known. I remember how good Coleen was with him. She talked to him constantly and made him feel very comfortable. She even took him for a walk one afternoon and he got tired after about 10 minutes. The confusion I first noticed two years earlier as he and I played golf had gotten worse and was noticeable to everyone but him.
I called my Uncle Bill a few days ago. Actually, I was returning a call his wife had made to me. Since I lost Coleen, they have been very attentive to me by staying in touch to see how I am fairing with things. I feel in some ways I am a replacement for him now. I am the next relative up for him since he lost his sisters. Uncle Bill and his sisters had a distant relationship but they loved each other. They argued and bickered a lot about things that didn’t really matter but always got over it. And they talked on the phone to each other. Probably not as much as they should have. I’m sure Uncle Bill thinks now that he would give anything to be able to call one of his sisters and tease them about something. He is a world class teaser. We ended up talking that night for over an hour. I mentioned that my uncle is suffering from dementia and has frequent difficulty finding his words and pronunciating some of them. That hasn’t stopped him from talking though.
We spoke that night of many things, mostly his condition. We also did a lot of reminiscing and talked a lot about my mother and grandmother and how life was when we were both younger. I realized two things while we were on the phone. Firstly, it occurred to me how few people I have in my life to share those kinds of memories and history with. And that list will decrease by one if Uncle Bill’s dementia gets stronger. He was very lucid remembering places and people from my mother’s life, especially her three husbands. The only other people in my life now to share that part of my past with are my brothers and I’m not sure how much of that they paid attention to.
The second epiphany I had that night was about legacies and how fleeting they are. My uncle and I got on the subject of his mother, my Grandma Mabel who was quite a character in her own right. I have many vivid memories of her. After he and I conversed about her for several minutes I said to him, “You know, there aren’t many of us left that knew Grandma and can talk about her like this.” Uncle Bill got quiet for a second then said, “No, I guess you’re right.” She never did anything newsworthy in her life. But she worked hard, raised three children, saved her money, and lived a full life. I would like to know more about her but there is no one around to teach me except my uncle. I don’t know how much he ever knew about my grandmother’s childhood or her parents, but whatever it is, I better find out fast before I lose him too.
A few years ago, I reconnected with a long-lost cousin from my dad’s family named Casey. He was working on our family genealogy and needed some information about me, my brothers, and our families. He invited me to that year’s family reunion which I attended and where I met an entire new family of wonderful relatives. Casey introduced me to a woman who knew my father when he was a boy. She knew a lot about our family history. I remember Casey saying to me, “I have to get as much information from that old bird as I can. Nobody else knows what she does and she won’t be around forever. When she goes, it all goes with her.”
We had an old photo in our dining room of a man sitting surrounded by several children. It was an old photo, circa late 1800’s maybe. Coleen’s grandmother had given it to her and the man sitting was Coleen’s great-grandfather Nicholas. I often looked at that photo and wondered if that was the sum of that man’s life. If that picture had become his legacy. There are few people left alive now that know the names and history of that man and those children. Since Coleen died, there are even fewer. I gave that photo to her sister so she could try her hand at protecting his legacy.
I found boxes of old photos in my mom’s apartment after she died last year. Some of them were very old and I had no idea who the people were in the photos. I knew my Aunt JoAnne would be able to identify them and I would be seeing her soon at a family reunion. I took those photos with me and she recognized everybody in them. And it was a good thing I did because she died a month later and I don’t think there is anybody else who could have answered those questions.
I will see my Uncle Bill again in August like I do every year. We have known each other for a very long time but things will be different this year. We have both lost a lot since last we met and in some ways, we are all that we have left of certain people and times of our pasts. He is one of the few people left in my life who knows some of the things I do. I would like that to last as long as it can. Protecting memories, prolonging legacies.
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