My Uncle Jim

This past week, my uncle Jim unexpectedly passed away. It came as a shock to everyone because he wasn't ill and seemed to be in good health. When my cousin (his daughter) asked if any family or friends wanted to write a favorite story about her dad, I knew it would be a good thing for me to do, since writing seems to be one of the best ways for me to process my feelings when someone dies.

I sat down and wrote out a few of my favorite memories of my uncle Jim, then sent them to my brother and sister, to have them check facts for me, since I wasn't sure if my memory of the events was accurate. Apparently, either my memory is great, or theirs are no better than mine because they didn't see anything that needed to be changed. :-)

I decided to share one of the stories in my blog this week, in part to honor my uncle Jim and also because it's a story about one of my favorite childhood dogs, Clancy, and it was fun to remember how he ended up being a permanent member of our family.

We grew up in California, so we didn’t get to interact much with all our relatives on the east coast. We got to see Uncle Jim more than anyone because his work would often bring him out to the west coast, but I still didn’t know him well. I had always assumed people on the east coast were no-nonsense types, conservative, more formal, and less emotional than those of us in California. I have no idea how I formed this opinion, but thanks to uncle Jim, I learned that those generalizations I had made about east-coast folks were wrong.

One year, back around 1979 or 1980, uncle Jim was in California on business and came over for dinner. We had just adopted a new dog a couple of days earlier and my parents weren’t sure they were going to let us keep him. Us kids, of course, had fallen in love with the dog and were determined to keep him.

Somehow in all the commotion that evening, our new dog, Clancy, slipped out of the house. When we finally discovered that he was missing, we were all frantic. I don’t even know if we were done with dinner yet, but immediately everyone was up from the table and out the door, in search of our missing dog.

This was when I began discovering my misconceptions about uncle Jim. I assumed that he would think we were all crazy for making such a big deal about a dog we had only had for a couple of days, but much to my delight, he joined in the search and seemed just as concerned as the rest of us that the dog was missing. There he was, walking the streets of a neighborhood he wasn’t familiar with, yelling “Clancy, Clancy!” along with the rest of us.

After an hour or so of combing the neighborhood, we came back to the house to regroup. Uncle Jim and I were walking into the kitchen together, when I heard my mom talking out loud to God. She said that if he helped bring Clancy back, he would never have to leave again, that we would for sure keep him. I don’t know what I was happier about, that I heard my mom make this promise to God, or that I had uncle Jim as a witness.

After several more hours of frantic searching, we finally found Clancy! When he was safely back in our house, us kids were excitedly telling him that he was going to get to stay forever, when my dad said, “We don’t know that yet.” I quickly pointed out that I had heard mom make a promise to God that he would get to stay. I saw my mom hesitate for a minute, so I chimed in with, “And uncle Jim heard her too.” And that seemed to be all it took to secure her promise and give Clancy his forever home.

I was delighted to find out that night that my Uncle Jim had such a good and caring heart and that he was willing to side with the kids when it came down to parents vs. kids. After that visit, I had a whole new perspective on my uncle Jim and looked forward to his next visit.

I sent the above story, as well as another one to my cousin and the next day, I got an email back from her telling me how much she, her mom and her sister had enjoyed the stories. She said the stories made them all laugh and cry and she wanted me to know how much they appreciated them.

It got me thinking about how much it means to someone to know what their loved one meant to other people, whether that loved one is a person or an animal. To know how someone's life was impacted by the deceased shifts the focus to their life, rather than their death, and to me, that is one of the most important things we can do . . . to honor the life, instead of focusing on the death.

So if you encounter someone who has lost a loved one, whether it's a person or an animal, and that loved one touched your life or impacted you in some way, I hope you will let them know. You will be giving them a great gift, helping them to focus on their loved ones life, helping them to remember why that life was so important . . . and giving them something positive to focus on in the difficult weeks and months that lie ahead.