Uncle Charlie July 14 ‘04
When someone gets to be “old and tired” as my cousin Billy put it about his father, it’s a blessing for them to move on. We know and wish this for the old person so they can be free of the pain. Beth said how wonderful that Uncle Charlie died in his sleep. That seemed so right for the gentle man we knew. I sincerely hope there was no suffering – visitors to the hospital in the two weeks had reported him in good spirits. I think my mother, Uncle Charlie’s sister, was in hospital about a week. I’m sure for Uncle Charlie’s family there was always the promise and the hope that he would be home soon.
It was certainly the case for me with my mum. Leastways, according to her and the nurses in my calls from Japan to the hospital near her home in Edinburgh. I am sure something similar happened with Uncle Charlie. It is difficult for people living far away to gauge the urgency of a situation, even if being informed of such. One will tend to hope for and believe an optimistic report, and anyway there’s the belief that the loved one will pull through. There’s a feeling you’re wishing them away by admitting to the need to take time off and go back.
Uncle Charlie was my mum’s favourite. She often said she loved his gentleness. “He’s so kind,” she would say. I can hear her coming to his defence if other siblings were giving him a hard time: “Oh, but you have to remember he’s so nice and gentle, a great strength that”. It was strange that two such different people got along well, not that my mother wasn’t kind but she had an energy, a directness, a yearning for more. Her father used to say to her, “Aye, the grass is aye greener somewhere else with you.”
I remember clearly Uncle Charlie’s pleasant way of agreeing, always with a soft smile, a nod and a few words such as, “Aye, that’s right, son.” There was a considerable knowing, too. If he’d had enough of what one of the siblings was saying he was capable of saying: “A’right, now that’ll do ye” or “I’ve had enough o’ the pair o’ ye goin’ on like that.” He was a great fixer of things. Mum would say to her parents: “Oh, wait till Charlie comes on Sunday, he’ll fix it”, and sure enough it would be fixed soon after his arrival. He was a patient person and would take great pains to look at something, to look for something. Happily for us lads he was often a great finder of things. On the annual summer holiday visits when I was a boy, Uncle Charlie would spend ages helping us find a lost tennis ball with which we were playing cricket or rounders. He was ever ready to help in that way, and loved going on walks with us. I can see him now, the way he walked, the walk of a tall slim man with a marked way of turning his feet outwards giving his gait a special grace.
Beth, my partner, has an abiding memory of Uncle Charlie gently laying his head on her shoulder after my mum’s funeral, a lovely sharing moment that was simultaneously a sign of trust and giving. I can believe there is some kind of god somewhere when I think of Uncle Charlie and his kind nature and the good long life he was granted, which he led with such pleasantness.
It’s hard in our culture of tormented grief and mourning to believe that the behaviour surrounding grief could be something other. There can be a serenity in grief insofar as it can be a great focusser of the mind. If you can allow the feeling of loss without its intolerable impression, then it’s possible to feel some calmness, call it the meditation of grief. Perhaps the death of someone is a wee bit easier when the person is very old. I think of Grandpa (86), Aunt Jo (83), my mum (84) and now Uncle Charlie over 90. My mum always said one of the hardest saddest things must be the loss of a child in a family. My philosophy on finding serenity in grief would be severely tested in that case, and my thoughts have to turn to the terrible grief Uncle Charlie must have suffered when his young daughter, Kathleen was killed in an accident in 1981.