My uncle died last March. A host of medical conditions
conspired to do him in at 93. His death certificate listed heart failure as the
immediate cause of death. But macular degeneration, edema, and melanoma, among
other ailments plagued him in the years leading up to it. Despite being hampered
by the shackles of old age, my uncle always had a kind word, a smile, a gentleness
that belied his suffering. And his mind
remained sharp till the end.
His final decline began with a fall in late January. Bruised
and bleeding, we insisted that he go to the hospital. His wounds healed, but he
failed to regain enough strength to walk on his own. When he stopped making
progress, his medical insurance insisted that he be discharged. He wanted to go
home, but he lived alone, miles from his nearest relative. I convinced him to go
to a personal care home where he could continue receiving physical therapy. I
told him it would be temporary – that he shouldn’t give up hope that he would
get back home.
Regardless of what I told him, I worried, lying awake night
after night trying to figure out how he could possibly go home in his disabled
condition. My wife, God bless her, did not waste time worrying. She took action
to get his house ready for his return. He would be using a walker or wheelchair,
so she replaced his worn shag carpeting and curling linoleum with new, low pile
carpeting and laminate flooring. She looked into 24-hour in-home assistance
services. She did everything possible to facilitate his return home. He never made it.
In the next few weeks, my uncle bounced between the
personal care home, the hospital and back again. My wife was with him at the
personal care home when he passed away in the early hours of March 4. The nurse had sent me home earlier with the
assurance that, “It won’t be tonight.”
Nearly nine months after my uncle’s death, I still
feel the loss. I often think I should give him a call. It’s been too long since
I last talked to him. Then I realize he’s no longer here.
He may best be described as an extraordinary ordinary
man. Living through the Great Depression taught him thriftiness, but also
generosity. Every time I took him to a doctor’s appointment, he insisted on
buying me lunch.
In World War II, he was aboard the troop ship S.S.
Leopoldville when it was torpedoed by a German U-Boat on Christmas Eve 1944. He
spent hours in the frigid waters of the English Channel before being rescued
and then hospitalized for exposure.
He had a high school education, worked in one of
Pittsburgh’s steel mills and married the girl next door. Years later, when his wife was confined with
Alzheimer’s disease, my uncle didn’t let a day go by without visiting her.
After my father died, I looked to my uncle as a
surrogate, visiting and telephoning him as often as I could, and inviting him to
dinner during the holidays. During those dinners, my children would tell him
about whatever was going on in their lives. “Is that right,” he would say, more
as an acknowledgment than a question. I never saw him lose his temper, treat someone
badly, or disparage anyone.
I once asked him how he would like to be remembered. “As
a kind man,” he replied. That is how I
will remember him.
