And Then There Was One

After three years of illness my Uncle Wilson, my father’s only sibling, passed away around noon today. He suffered too long and was in too much pain, but he stuck around as long as he did because he was so loved by so many and hated letting anyone down. I am thankful that my sweet cousins, Brooks, Leigh and Sarah were there with their mom as they always were in the beginning, the long middle and the end.

Will was two years younger than my father and for their whole life it always was the two of them. Growing up in a tiny house on Lockland Ave. in Winston-Salem they shared a room where Will would lie on his bed and read his comic books. When my father was about ten he decided that he would like to have a room of his own. Since it was only a two-bedroom house my Dad asked his father if he could dig out a basement room under their house.

Since my Dad had both a morning and afternoon paper route I’m sure my grandfather did not think my Dad would actually do it. I always wondered who’d let their kid dig a room under their house, cement block it and pour a cement floor? No one much came down to see what was going on until the day my father announced it was done and he was moving out of the room with his brother and down to the newly created basement.

My Uncle Wilson, who had read a lot of comic books while my Dad had been digging came down to see where his older brother was going. He looked around at the much bigger room with a shower in the corner of the room and announced that he too was going to move in with my Dad, and so he did.

That was the way they were together for their whole lives. My Dad went to Chapel Hill and Will came too. My Dad married someone named Janie my Uncle Wilson did too. Our families would spend summers at Pawley’s Island together, My Uncle Wilson, Aunt Janie and my cousins would come on vacation wherever we were living, be in Wilton or London. When my Uncle Wilson retired from the church he came to work with my Dad. Both brothers moved to retire at their grand parent’s farm.

They differed in their politics, but never let ideologies divide them. They both love each other’s children as their own. To me Uncle Wilson was much more than an Uncle, he was my father once removed. As an Episcopal priest he preformed the marriage ceremony at my wedding and at every wedding in our family. As a Jungian physiologist he analyzed and explained us all to each other. But mostly as a father, an Uncle, a grandfather and a great Uncle he loved on us.

But it was as a brother that he was always there. My grand parents were not the easiest couple nor ideal parents. I think that my father and his brother were always there for each other when things got tough. I’m glad that Uncle Wilson’s suffering is over, but I am sad for all of us who won’t have him to turn to for wisdom and advice. I’m sad for my Aunt, and my cousins, but mostly I am sad for my father. He lost the person who has been with him all his life that he can remember.