According to our gifts and abilities

“You must be Jill”, the man said as he approached the casket.
“Yes, I am. Have we met?”
“No, but I met your uncle only once and he spoke of you and your brother,” he said. I pointed Jeff out across the crowded room. He was talking to other second cousins.

“I’m a distant cousin on your grandfather’s side, mutual relatives of Wilbur and Orville.” He handed me a packet of papers. “Tom wanted these and I think it’s best I leave them in your safe hands.”

The papers were genealogical records of the Wright side of my family from Central Indiana: Millville, Richmond, New Castle and environs. The man had come more than two hours to attend Uncle Tom’s funeral. He told me Uncle Tom had gone over to a family reunion he had seen announced in the newspaper the year before.

“He came all that way by taxi!” the man said. “I respected his interest in making the family connections. That’s why I made the trip now.”

So that’s what Uncle Tom had spent the money I sent him for Christmas on. Better that than lots of other things I could think of.

Uncle Tom had died of cancer, not making his last trip to New York City where he might have been a victim of a different kind of terrorism. Instead of being there, we watched snippets of the news on TV in his hospital room. He’d probably planned the trip as a Bucket List kind of thing. I had not known he was so ill until Jeff phoned me and told me our uncle had had a very hard few days in his apartment before finally getting himself together enough to get a taxi to the hospital.

“He’s in the hospital and he’ll not be going home,” Jeff told me on the phone. “When will you be back in town?”
“I’ll come tomorrow.”
As things turned out, Jeff took care of everything at Uncle Tom’s apartment while I took care of the hospital visits, decisions and transfer to a nursing home. My brother and I are an excellent team in crisis. Divide and conquer according to our gifts and abilities.

As he lay dying, Uncle Tom asked me for a few couple of simple things. “I want to die with dignity,” he said.
“I’ll do my best.”
“And I don’t want to die alone.”
“Okay. I’ll be here,” I choked out.

He’s the only sibling of my mom and he had no kids. We’re it, Jeff and I. Well, Jeff’s kids too, but they’re not old enough to carry the load yet.

Days passed. Conversations resulted in questions and family history spilled out.
“You do know where your mother’s name came from, don’t you?” Uncle Tom said expectantly.
“No. Should I?”
“Marietta was your great grandmother’s name; mom’s mom who died when mom was just a girl. Your mother was named after her.”
I never knew that and the best remaining source of that information was nearly gone. “What else don’t I know?”

He didn’t begin to answer that question, but his mischievous eyes told me he had a few choice retorts he could make. Uncle Tom had a wicked sense of humour, well informed and quick. His background in theatre and his work in museums, both in Indiana and New York City, made him a choice partner for Jeopardy!

When a Hospice Chaplain came in a few days later Uncle Tom was beyond stories or filling in the blanks for me. When she discovered what I do for a living, she relaxed as far as figuring out how to minister to me. We speak enough of the same language to cut out a lot of the small talk. The big kind woman asked me to tell her about my uncle. As I told her about Uncle Tom’s stage performance and named the musicals he’d been in, she closed her prayer book and started singing hits from Broadway musicals! I was thrilled and Uncle Tom, who had been a bit restless because of the medication or pain or both, stilled immediately. The chaplain noticed his calm and sang him another one.

Stories unfold out of real life situations, conversations we have at the intersections of life. The best stories are when people respond appropriately, not according to a script falsely applied to the circumstances. Uncle Tom only followed a script when he was onstage. That chaplain wrote her own too. I appreciated that.

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