An uncle died recently. We weren’t close, but weren’t estranged. He had cancer that was advanced in its spread. He kept the news close, and we didn’t talk after his diagnosis. I would have liked to. He was private. And I figured then that the time we last spoke was going to stand as our last conversation. Short time between when I learned of the diagnosis and then his death.
He was gentle and kind, an outlier among my uncles for those. Stubborn, too. Took care of things on his own. He loved fishing. I thought we might have made it onto the ice this year, but the weather didn’t cooperate and he wasn’t well. His prognosis left little hope for him being around next winter. On the day he died, he walked into the woods and lied down and shot himself, in a quiet and tranquil place where the act and its discovery wouldn’t disturb anyone.
His ashes were buried next to his parents, in the cemetery a block from my grandmother’s home. I hadn’t been in there for a long time. It’s small, hedged in with sandy soil and big oak and pine trees and needles all over, and the hills within shield parts of it from the state road outside. My grandmother used to walk me here when I stayed with her as a toddler because it was so near her home, and her husband was buried there. We cleaned sticks and leaves from around headstones, and piled them into a red wagon. I remember my mom telling me the rows of trees adjacent were planted when she was in grammar school.
His best friend eulogized him, gray day more winter than spring. He was an artist; that I knew. Some work hung in the basement of my grandmother’s home and as a kid, I didn’t understand how anyone could draw or paint like that. From the eulogy, I learned he wrote short stories in high school.
His friend wrote this poem, which was printed on his prayer card: