Last Saturday, my Uncle Charlie passed away. He was 72 and reportedly had myriad fatal ailments, not the least of which was colon cancer. It was not sudden. He knew he was dying. And in the end, he did not suffer.
I did not know my Uncle Charlie very well. In fact, I can’t even remember the last time I saw him. I must have been 10, or 12, or 14. It may have been at my Grandma’s house, or an Aunt’s house, or another Uncle’s house. I have a perpetual memory of Charlie, sitting in a chair in a living room with all the other adults, watching sports on television, talking and eating. Like every man on that side of my family, he was large — over 6 foot, with vast shoulders and a thick coating of muscle. But Charlie was also fat, topping 400 pounds (at least) in a time before such girth was a common American attribute. He never married, never had kids, never pursued a serious career beyond auto repair. I remember being slightly fearful of him, perhaps sensing his discomfiture around us, his nieces and nephews.
And then he stopped going to family gatherings. We still got reports of Charlie from our uncles, with whom he hunted and fished, but I never saw him again. He was a distant relative who wasn’t very far in actual distance. I didn’t know Charlie well enough to make pronouncements about him, but my feeling is that he was guileless, naive, helpless, simple. Easy to forget about, my distant Uncle Charlie, but then I saw his obituary picture and… I saw myself in his face. Those are my eyebrows, those are my eyes. That is my flesh and blood, my Uncle Charlie, and tomorrow I will head to PA — come hell or, most likely, high water — and pay homage to him.
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“To The Sun-Set Breeze” by Walt Whitman
Ah, whispering, something again, unseen,
Where late this heated day thou enterest at my window, door,
Thou, laving, tempering all, cool-freshing, gently vitalizing
Me, old, alone, sick, weak-down, melted-worn with sweat;
Thou, nestling, folding close and firm yet soft, companion better than talk, book, art,
(Thou hast, O Nature! elements! utterance to my heart beyond the rest–and this is of them,)
So sweet thy primitive taste to breathe within–thy soothing fingers my face and hands,
Thou, messenger–magical strange bringer to body and spirit of me,
(Distances balk’d–occult medicines penetrating me from head to foot,)
I feel the sky, the prairies vast–I feel the mighty northern lakes,
I feel the ocean and the forest–somehow I feel the globe itself swift-swimming in space;
Thou blown from lips so loved, now gone–haply from endless store, God-sent,
(For thou art spiritual, Godly, most of all known to my sense,)
Minister to speak to me, here and now, what word has never told, and cannot tell,
Art thou not universal concrete’s distillation? Law’s, all Astronomy’s last refinement?
Hast thou no soul? Can I not know, identify thee?
