My uncle Jim took this photo in 1953 when he was 17. It was included in a book he co-authored called The Oregon-American Lumber Company: Ain’t No More (affiliate link):
Earlier this month, I got word my uncle Jim had passed. Last night, I finally called my aunt to find out what happened. Our conversation was brief, as they usually were the rare times they’ve happened throughout my life.
My aunt mentioned one fact that stunned me: they were married 70 years. That’s longer than both my parents lived. They also lived in the same house longer than I’ve been alive.
I wasn’t really close to anyone in my family. On either side of it. Of course, when you’re a child of divorced parents and a latch-key kid who rode city busses on his own by the time he was seven years old, day-to-day survival was a lot more top-of-mind.
When I was seven, my mom moved to Hawaii to be with my step-father. She left me with my dad, who, a few months later, totaled a car on a light pole while drunk. This eventually led to us moving in with his mother, who was in a wheelchair and lived apartment for a couple years. It was during this stint that I remember the only time I ever saw his brother…who, it turns out, is a pedophile. I feel like I’ve always known that, though I have no idea when I actually found out. His father, whom remarried…we saw maybe two or three times. I got the feeling things were not great between them. Never asked why.
Eventually, I decided to go to Hawaii and live with mom. To her credit, she managed to get me into HPA, albeit with financial aid and her working odd jobs to pay for it. While she had noticeable problems with alcohol growing up, she kept it together long enough until I graduated college.
Mom didn’t talk much about her past and, on some level, I knew enough not to ask. I vaguely remember seeing other relatives from her side of the family once or twice in Southern California before the age of six, but never again. One of her brothers lived or stayed with grandma on and off. The other lived far away, and we visited on a couple of occasions. Like my mother, both of them had trouble with alcohol to varying degrees and have since passed away.
My mom’s sister (the oldest of her siblings, my mom being the youngest) married Jim. Their house was always peaceful and loving every time I visited…even the last time I visited them a couple years ago. I can’t say that about any place I lived growing up, nor I have been able to say that about my own living situation until fairly recently.
Of all the people that have come and gone through my life over the years, as many different places I’ve lived, I always knew exactly where I could find one truly good person in my life: my uncle Jim. And when I say I knew exactly where to find him, I mean that quite literally: him and my aunt Marie lived in the exact same house longer than I’ve been alive.
He ain’t no more. Given the one constant I had in my life to date just changed, I feel a bit untethered as I write this. It’s not because I miss him. If anything, I am grateful for his continued presence in my life.
What has me untethered is the trauma flooding in. Trauma from the days I spent the most time at their house growing up. Trauma from my marriage, during which I was able to occasionally visit them because of work travel. Trauma that, in some cases, isn’t mine, yet I’ve carried it all the same.
It’s by the grace of God that I didn’t end up like everyone else in my family. Thankfully, I had someone in my life who, through his mere presence in my life, showed me, despite the darkness in the world, the kind of person I could be.
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