Losing An Uncle, Gaining A Family

I'm not sure why it takes a death in the family to spur us to reconnect with loved ones we've lost track of, but that's what the last few days has been like for me. My beloved Uncle Stan died on Valentine's day and I traveled to his part of the country to attend the memorial service held in his honor last weekend.

Stan lived a long and interesting life and he was rich in the areas that count most, love and life experiences - as well as being well off materially. Like a star, his homestead attracted the nearby dwelling places of his natural and extended families. His own fascinating house commands an incredible view at the top of a low summit aptly named "Love's Hill". It's tempting to write about the cool cars he drove and raced, his pilot's license, his professional ascent to Chief of Medicine at the hospital where he worked, as well as the less auspicious but satisfying medical work he did at local schools and prisons. My dad says that his brother "Wanted to do everything, try everything." It's pretty clear from my life history that I inherited that part of the family's genetic sequence myself.

Whether it was the turbulent transition from the sixties to the seventies or personal transitions in their own lives, my father and uncle left the wives of their 20s and 30s at a similar time, stranding cousins and aunts from the regular contact that would have happened if it had not been so. We all went by nicknames back then. I was "Buddy" (Bernard II), Stan Jr. was "Chummy", and his brother John was "Johnny". My paternal grandparents were a hub of occasional re-uniting, and it was always fun to get together. Well fun for me anyway, I was the youngest of us three. I'm sure I was a bit of a pain in the butt to Chummy and Johnny, but it was the good kind of pain in the butt - they got back at me whenever we went outside and played catch. Guess who got to be the eternal and everlasting monkey in the middle? Good times.

And then the inevitable high school commencements and goings out into the world, some to college, some to the military. We were spread out all over the country. Every once in a while one of us would make an effort and re-establish contact. But like in the parable of the sower, "the cares of this world" took their toll and it would often be years before we would hear from one another.

So last weekend, I got the chance to hug the necks of some dear people I hadn't seen in a good long while, not just Chummy and Johnny and their mother, but Stan's second family and friends of the family as well. Miss Baltimore came with me (I had been visiting her for Valentine's weekend when I got the news) and it was a delight to introduce her to them and vice versa. It felt so good to be so connected again after all the years. I hope we all make the effort to keep in touch and visit from time to time.