Thomas Uhl, RIP
This morning my mother sent an email indicating that my paternal grandfather was in a hospice in Houston and was not likely to last the month; she had this information from his physician. As the day continued, various folks who were visiting him indicated that they felt it would be much nearer than that.
This afternoon it occurred to me that if he were conscious perhaps I could ring him on the phone, or have some convey a message—or maybe I might hop in the car and drive down there (Houston’s about two days’ journey). I rang my mother to find out if he were in fact still conscious, only to find that his passing away had been reported to her minutes previously.
I’d not seen Granddad since the summer of ’97; for various reasons I’ve never quite followed he had become estranged from his family, and even then he wasn’t altogether well. But I’ve always remembered him as he was when I was growing up: smoking cigars on the backyard bench and giving us boys the cigar rings; the water-Uzis he gave us, to our parents’ consternation; watching Fletch and Spies Like Us at his home in Houston; the way he’d get water to squirt from his fist when we swam in his pool (a trick I’ve never been able to master). Although he’d long since given up cigars by that last visit, he still had a box, which he gave to me; I remember covertly smoking one with my brother Thomas when he was still in high school. That last trip we talked about golf mostly; that was right when Tiger Woods was making his breakout. I wish I could have seen him again.
Granddad’s mother passed away when he was a boy, in the 30s or 40s. His brother fell in battle on Iwo Jima sixty years ago this last March. His own father died when I was only about a year old, and now Granddad goes to join them. My father is now an orphan (his mother, my grandfather’s ex-wife, died in January ’97). When I woke up this morning, I had two grandfathers; now I have but one.
Eternal be his memory.
