Uncle Willie

My Uncle Willie died yesterday. Just like that. Nobody even told me he was sick. But then his family has always been stingy with information. Turns out he had cancer. He died peacefully with my Aunt and all his family around him. I just wish I could go to his funeral. That's what families are for. Among other things. To make a good showing at the turning points in our lives. Like baptisms and weddings and funerals. Long ago, when I was young and flippant, and had no care for the future, I made a decision that ensured I would very rarely be able to show up.

When my dad was dying we lived in California. Heaven and earth had to be moved by the OC and my F-I-L to get a passport for baby Liz and get us half way around the world,asap.

When Rise,my only sister, got married, I couldn't go. Three small children and a skinny bank account.

When my mother was dying of cancer Rise was the one trekking daily to hospice, while I wrung my hands ineffectually in Montana. I did, however, make it home for her funeral.

When my cousin, Willie's oldest, got married a few years ago, I was at first determined to go, since there was no longer the excuse of small children. But somehow I was overruled.

And now Uncle Willie has gone to join his brother, our Uncle Denis, in the great cattle market in the sky. I'm not sure my mother would be hanging out at the celestial cattle mart, but she'll probably be waiting at the pearly gates, along with our tall Granddad, Garrett O'Rourke, him of the benign smile and the snow-white moustache [known to me mainly through photographs, as he died when I was only four]. With Granny on his arm, in one of her flowered dresses, with her silver hair tied back in a bun. There'll be singing and dancing and jigs and reels in heaven after the funeral on Monday.

Auntie Bid [I couldn't say her name correctly and my version stuck] is the only one of my mother's siblings left. She was the youngest, and as mad as a March hare, and lots of fun. But now she's in a nursing home because they couldn't get her to take her medicine. The cousins come and take her out frequently. If I hadn't dipped out I could be doing my share there too. As it is, she probably wouldn't know me. So sad, growing old and having all your friends and peers drifting off, one by one, leaving you alone.

As a small child I remember spending time at Granny's. Uncle Denis was the heir to my grandfather's farm, being the oldest son. But Uncle Willie had a cunning plan. He was courting Shelia L, over the hill. Shelia was an only child, on a big farm adjacent to the O'Rourkes. I remember teasing him as he got ready to go. "Willie's going courting!" Polishing his boots and putting Brylcream in his hair. And, while he polished, singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas". Throughout my life, whenever I've heard that song I think of Uncle Willie.

By and by, the lovely Shelia succumbed to his charms. Theirs was the first wedding I ever attended. I was ten. And sat beside a grown up cousin whom I adored. Who explained to me how to eat the grapefruit with the little cherry on top. There was singing and dancing later, and a little too much to drink for the grown-ups. As young as I was, I remember feeling bad for my mother when my dad very publicly flirted with another cousin, sister to the one I'd sat with. It was such a mystery to me, all this grown up intrigue.

The following year we were out to visit in the country again, and the young couple had their first baby. Who I remember tightly grasping my little finger, in the way that tiny babies do.

A few years later this tiny baby, was running around in the farmyard, cursing a blue streak, a talent she'd learned from her dad,to the grevious mortification of her ladylike mother. It was she who called with the sad news. She gave up cursing a long time ago and turned out to be more like her mother, our aunt.

Now that lovely, ladylike aunt has lost her life's partner. I spoke to her today and she sounded characteristically philosophical. Glad that he'd died peacefully, with herself and their eight children around him. That's the way to go. Not the lonesome way so many people die these days, far from family and friends and a place they love.

"Slawn leath" Uncle Willie. May you be in heaven half an hour before the divil knows you're dead. And may you rest in peace.