Uncle Don

Recently, in the midst of one of the worst winters of my life, I found myself desperately seeking some refuge from what seemed like an unending assault upon my happiness and good senses.

Then it hit me- I was in Riverside, California, and Uncle Don lived just an hour and forty-five minutes or so south of me. And Uncle Don? That guy was a walking party.

Don was my mother's oldest brother, and had been a truck driver for as long as I can remember. Every so often, his trucking route would take him through our neck of the woods in New England, and few things shocked the house with excitement like a surprise visit from Uncle Don! He did things that, as a kid, we found to be exciting and rebellious, like telling slightly-off-color stories, and drinking COFFEE! Black, no less! (Keep in mind, I'm from a family of staunch Mormons.)

As I grew older, though, and went through some of life's more egregious crapstorms, I came to understand Uncle Don on a far deeper and more personal level than I had as a child. I was divorced, he was divorced. I had had my time away from the church, and so had he. We were kindred spirits in a way.

But this understanding was from a distance, still. I mean, I rarely ever saw him. A lunch every so often in Salt Lake City, when he was up visiting his sisters, or maybe a family reunion or a funeral, but other than that, he was a name mentioned anecdotally when I talked to Mom.

Well, I was going to change that a little. I gave Don a call and told him I wanted to come down for a visit, and he was ecstatic about the idea. We spent a good ten minutes on the phone as he told he how to get there. I thought about cutting him off and telling him I could find it on my phone's GPS, but even giving directions, every other sentence was interrupted with a joke and a chuckle of laughter, so I let him go on, writing it all down as he went, the old fashioned way.

I pulled up to his place on Saturday morning. It was a long row of apartments in an over-55 community, and I crawled through the parking lot slowly, unable to see any numbers, and wondering how in the hell I was going to find him. That proved not to be a problem, though. Don was standing outside his aprtment with a gaggle of adoring old women gathered around him. I shook my head and laughed, admiring how he still had it at the ripe old age of 82.

As I walked up to him, he took my hand in a firm handshake and introduced me to the neighborhood ladies. "This is my nephew Steve," he said proudly, and the doting crowd of fans all chattered excitedly, more to suck up to him than out of any excitement to see me. Don had a big grin on his face, but not the kind that comes from egotistical pride from the admiration of a few women. No, rather, it was the smile of a man who knows that while the attention is flattering, he doesn't need it to know that he's still something. Don was amused by their attention more than anything.

As he chased away the old hens and led me into his apartment, his first question was, "Well, are you staying the night?" I hesitated for the briefest of moments. I really hadn't been planning on it, but damn it, I had been here for five minutes and was already having such a good time, that I said, "I sure am!"

And so we had a blast. I wish I could go into detail about every moment of that weekend down there at Don's. We drove all around his town, and he pointed all kinds of things out to me. We saw the house he had lived in for thirty years. He had a story about every house, every neighbor, every place we passed.

Now I know what you're thinking- oh jeeeeeeez, old people stories! But no, these were DON stories. These were good!

Like this one:

"You see that pole there by the house? When your Aunt J was fooling around with that damned dentist in town, he used to park his car over there because there were no lights on that side of the house, and he figured he could sneak in without being seen. Well, those neighbors over there? (he points across the street) They came out in the middle of the night and let all of the air out of his tires. (He laughs, as if this is the funniest thing he has ever heard in his life.) All 4 of them! (He laughs again, harder and longer this time.)" We continued on down the block, for a new house and a new story.

That was my weekend with Don. I found out more about him- his life, his family, his marriage, his business, his time fighting in WWII, his friends from the war, his brothers and sisters- than I had ever know before. We went out to eat at his favorite places, took a drive up into the mountains to see some of his favorite sights, had lunch at the local Indian casino, and we even got out the boomerangs he had bought in Australia and took them over to the local school yard to see if we could figure out how to make the damn things come back to us. (Incidentally, we never did.)

That weekend with Uncle Don was exactly what I needed. It's amazing how being with a family member can bring light back into your soul like that, especially when you're with someone who has been through the ringer himself, and survived it, and came out ok on the tale end after it.

One of my best memories from this weekend was a conversation we had about faith. See, that's where Don and I had dissimilar stories; he stayed away from the church for the most part, whereas I went back to it as quickly as I could. He told me his views of the church when he was telling me about how he'd hide from the local missionaries. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Oh," he said over dinner, "I suppose I felt bad about how I gave those missionaries the run-around, but after a while, I just stopped coming to the door when they came over to visit me. See, they were barking up the wrong tree with me. They needed to be out looking for people who didn't believe in the church. But I DO believe in the church. See, I already KNOW it's true. I just don't go, that's all. They didn't need to be wasting their time with me."

As much as I wish I could have seen him make his way back into the church some day, I guess it's enough for me to know that he never doubted it, no matter how much trouble he may have had living it.

Saturday night, we swung by my cousin Michelle's place, to see her Christmas lights. Don loved those lights, and he adored his daughter Michelle, as well as her husband and her two little girls. And he thought their Christmas lights that year were about the coolest thing he had ever seen. We stopped by, took them in, said hi to Michelle, snapped a couple of pictures, and then we were on our way.

As we drove away, I got a glimpse of how magnanimous Don could be. "See, Michelle was talking about her job as a teacher once, and I said to her, Michelle, if you can be half the teacher your mother was, you'll be a success. See, Steve, as much as I have to say about your Aunt J, I have to give her one thing. She was an amazing teacher. She really knew how to reach out to those kids. Oh, how they cried when she retired!"

Don didn't have to share that with me. But he did, and he went out of his way to do it, too, more than once over the course of the weekend. He may not have enjoyed his marriage very much, but he was a big enough man to have seen the good in his ex-wife, and a big enough man to go out of his way to point it out to others.

Sunday afternoon, when I loaded up in my car to head home, he came out to see me off. I gave him one of those man-hugs, half-handshake and half-hug, and we spoke for a little bit, and then, as I was climbing into the car to leave, he said to me, "Well, Steven, I'm glad you came down. That was a lot of fun! We're going to have to do this again sometime, maybe when your cousin Chip comes down in a few weeks!"

"Sure thing, Uncle Don, I'll be in touch! Let's plan on it!"

It just wasn't to be. Uncle Don passed away a couple of days ago in a car accident on I-15, just outside of Rancho Cucamonga, not 20 miles from me here. It was quick, and unexpected, a total fluke of an accident for a man who had spent his entire life driving all over the country, logging literally millions of miles in his time. But that's how life goes.

I'm glad I got to see the old guy before he left us. Uncle Don was a one-of-a-kind, and was dearly loved by all of us, and by me, personally. We'll miss you, Uncle Don. I'll miss you.