That'll Leave a Mark

December 10th, 2011

Okay, so before I get started, I just want to acknowledge to all of you readers that I’ve not been in a good place lately.  This happens to everyone from time to time.  You have a bad day, a bad week, a bad year – it happens.

I think things for me have been sucky since about 2004.  I know I’m not alone.  I’m with an entire percentage of the population that can justifiably call what we’re in a “depression”.   Screw the actual technical economic term – it’s just a bad time.  I can truthfully say that I’ve never been at a lower point regarding my physical well being, my emotional state, and my financial outlook.  But that’s neither here nor there.

Fortunately (or unfortunately – it all depends on your perspective on this) when it comes to ranting or writing about topics, it colors my outlook bleakly.  And some of my best rants have been written in that mood.  I find writing about these things comes in the same vein as how old southern black men can sit on their porch and sing the blues.

The worse it gets, the better the tune.

Let's move on, shall we?

Earlier this week, I lost my Uncle Bill.  Well, not lost, I know where he is right now.  After they scatter his ashes, I won’t know for sure where he’ll be, but I’ll have an approximate knowledge of his whereabouts.  (I know, not the most tasteful joke.  Gallows humor comes to me easily nowadays).

So my Uncle Bill is dead.  Let me tell you about him.

He was the middle child of three – between my mother, the youngest, and my Aunt June, the oldest.  And, much like myself, was shaped by the factor of being the only son in a house full of women.  My Uncle Bill was a character and had been crotchety from age five on.  He was smart, did well in school, and eventually became a chemist for Mobile.  Later on, he decided to study law and went to night school.  He became a lawyer who specialized in dental cases. 

He was also the father of seven – yes, seven – children.   He raised seven children.  Three of them are lawyers.  One is a paralegal.  One is a salesman.  One is a mechanic.   And one is a homemaker.

I could stop now and leave you with a pleasant image of my uncle.  That would be in keeping with good taste.  And for the most part I want to leave you with that image: The image of a hardworking man who loved his family. 

And when we look at the life of a man, and unless he was exceptional, that man will have his dark side.  In truth, there was a lot more to Billy than what I’m revealing but I love the man too much right now to besmirch his memory with things that are only too well known among his family.

My uncle battled alcoholism for over forty years. 

I know this because he told me his story when I started drinking more than my fair share.  In an effort to get me to taper off, he sat me down one day and told me the stories of a drunk.  Those stories never left me and have always been a barometer for me when I drink.  I’m forty-five now.  I drink, maybe, twice a month.  Yes, there are occasions when I drink to excess.  It happens to everyone.  But there is never a time when I don’t think of the stories my uncle told me about a young attorney that would get up, start work, and after his first case of the day would go to the local bar and stand on line with the other drunks waiting for the bar owner to open his pub.

My uncle was an AA sponsor for those less fortunate than himself.  My cousin Brian said in his eulogy to my uncle that he would give assistance to those who needed help to get back on their feet.
That was some of who he was.

Within the last ten years, he’d moved down to New Jersey from Staten Island with his new wife.  He came to my parents’ house often to share in Sunday dinner.  I’d seen a lot more of him in the later part of his life and I enjoyed his company.

He always had a good story about his time at the track or one about one of his court cases.  Sometimes it was just his character of annoyed bewilderment.

When a personality like that comes into your life, it not only touches you but leaves a lasting impression upon you and makes you a different person.  I see it when I talk to my cousins.  Some of him lives in them.  They have his humor.  They have his way about them. 

My Uncle Bill was influenced by my grandfather, who was apparently larger than life as well. 

We as humans learn from people we like.  Monkey see, monkey do.  If we see someone doing something we find interesting, we emulate it or bring it into our being.  If it works for us, we keep it.   And even when it doesn’t work for us we keep the bad stuff as well.

How many times have we heard ourselves say, “I’ve become my father.”

In many ways, I’m becoming my father.  I look in the mirror and see him.  As I get older and older, I see my father’s face.  Biologically, I’ve inherited half his genetic code.  I’ve gotten my mother’s (and grandfather’s and uncle’s) hair.  In habit, I’ve gotten much of his temper.   My short fuse comes from him.  I will spend the rest of my life trying to overcome that.

However, in that mixture, I’ve found parts of my Uncle Bill in myself.  There are times I find his humor or annoyed bewilderment coming out of my mouth – especially when I’m telling a story when everything goes wrong and I’m in a “can’t win for losing” mode.  I’ve heard so many of his stories of him at the track betting on so many losing horses that his very intonations have come into play when I’m in the middle of one of those stories.  Why?  It was something I liked and found that it worked for me on an unconscious level.

That’s what he gave me.

I miss you, Billy.