![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigo_rose99 My uncle has always been in the background of my life.
Some of my earliest memories of my uncle and aunt have a bit of disapproval radiating from her (I think she thought kids were too noisy and unrestrained), but really cool gifts. They always lived far away, and their visits had the taste of the exotic.
As I grew older and saw them at family reunions, my uncle grew to be the one filled with unexpected surprises. He brought a potato cannon one year and the family spent quite a bit of time attempting to hit different targets and discussing the relative merits of size-matching when choosing potatoes. By the potato cannon year it didn't even surprise me, that was just the kind of thing my uncle did.
When I went to college on the East Coast, my parents were unable to visit for a variety of logistical reasons. My aunt and uncle came instead. They came like clockwork to every family event, year after year. They took me shopping and out to dinner those times when having Family Show Up was critically important to me.
As I drifted into adult life of job and marriage and work travel, my aunt and uncle were the family we visited the most often (after my own parents). After my parents died, they have been really the heart of my family ties.
My uncle died recently. Not unexpected. He has been going this way for a while. I'm happy for my aunt, because I hope this will provide her a freedom to do the things she wants that she has not had as an adult. But I still miss the chaos that he would bring to every otherwise logical interaction. "You put a WHAT next to your mail box?!" "What was the tennis court for if neither of you plays tennis?" "You want to make bookshelves out of that?! But they aren't level!" He had this crazy way of approaching problems. His solutions were so strange! And the kind of strange that often involved duct tape.
Some of my earliest memories of my uncle and aunt have a bit of disapproval radiating from her (I think she thought kids were too noisy and unrestrained), but really cool gifts. They always lived far away, and their visits had the taste of the exotic.
As I grew older and saw them at family reunions, my uncle grew to be the one filled with unexpected surprises. He brought a potato cannon one year and the family spent quite a bit of time attempting to hit different targets and discussing the relative merits of size-matching when choosing potatoes. By the potato cannon year it didn't even surprise me, that was just the kind of thing my uncle did.
When I went to college on the East Coast, my parents were unable to visit for a variety of logistical reasons. My aunt and uncle came instead. They came like clockwork to every family event, year after year. They took me shopping and out to dinner those times when having Family Show Up was critically important to me.
As I drifted into adult life of job and marriage and work travel, my aunt and uncle were the family we visited the most often (after my own parents). After my parents died, they have been really the heart of my family ties.
My uncle died recently. Not unexpected. He has been going this way for a while. I'm happy for my aunt, because I hope this will provide her a freedom to do the things she wants that she has not had as an adult. But I still miss the chaos that he would bring to every otherwise logical interaction. "You put a WHAT next to your mail box?!" "What was the tennis court for if neither of you plays tennis?" "You want to make bookshelves out of that?! But they aren't level!" He had this crazy way of approaching problems. His solutions were so strange! And the kind of strange that often involved duct tape.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 06:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 07:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 10:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-03-23 02:18 am (UTC)I am super glad I got to meet him. Besides having interesting stories and silly jokes, he had an inspiring knack of seeing money-making opportunities everywhere, and he reminds me that it's okay to think baked beans are yummy (though admittedly, I prefer turning them into beanie weinies). I'm not normally into motorized vehicles either (except for practical reasons), but I definitely appreciated some of his.
no subject
Date: 2018-03-22 07:09 pm (UTC)That's a bittersweet statement, to be sure. I feel much the same for my mother. Her parents and then my dad died. So starting five years ago, she was free to do whatever the heck she wanted/wants. She's even used that phrasing. "I'm free." No pets, only a few plants, and hold the mail...