For Whom the Bluebell Tolls

Having been diagnosed with terminal cancer and given one to three months to live, my uncle Dave promptly died six days later. I have relatively few memories of my uncle Dave, in comparison with other aunts and uncles in my life. Sadly, several childhood memories of avoiding him in fear are probably the strongest recollections I have.

Dave is my mother’s brother, the eldest of my mother and her four siblings. Dave was also the least social amongst the siblings. The holiday season was very busy in the family and there were sure to be at least two gatherings each year; Dave was not typically present at these. When Dave did attend these functions, and I wandered too close to him while he wasn’t sufficiently distracted, he would quickly reach out and hit me in the arm.

On a pain scale of one to ten, these strikes were a three at most, a typical boy would have demonstrated his strength in taking the pain, & perhaps hit him back with an ornery, vengeful look in his eye. But I was not this kind of boy, I was afraid of those boys; I was more of what my brother affectionately called a “wimp”. Upon being struck I would rub the lump in my arm and look wide-eyed into my uncle’s playful yet predatory stare. My earlier memories involve yelping and running to Mom, but as I grew older I’d just laugh nervously and look for some reason to leave the vicinity.

I’ve never held it against Uncle Dave; I realized growing up what sensitive, shy, and yes, wimpy child I had been. As our relationship matured, Dave eventually stopped hitting me. I don’t know if he realized that I didn’t like it (I would have thought he’d have stopped sooner if this was the case), or if I just got too old to play with. Unfortunately, this left our relationship on a verbal frontier. Uncle Dave was a man of few words and I was a very bashful young man… Our conversations never lasted long. He’d ask how I was doing and I’d give my typical monosyllabic answer, then going out on a limb, I’d ask how he was doing. Dave would reply in tones reminiscent of Pooh’s gloomy friend Eeyore “Oh, alright I guess.” One almost expected him to add “Thanks for noticin’ me.” But after this exchange our conversation would die in an awkward silence.

I most recently saw Uncle Dave at my sister’s wedding. No longer the shy child I had once been, I expected to do a little better with Dave. As it turns out, I grew up, not unlike Dave, to be a man of few words myself (at least verbally). I tried harder for conversation, and it did go farther, but neither of us could sustain it for very long. I would have liked a good conversation with my Uncle, to get to know him better, but in some ways I felt a little relieved… I had always assumed it was my fault that we could never talk. I worried that I had ostracized him with my humorless responses to his attempts to play with me as a child. I was afraid that I had perpetuated this separation between us by my shyness and my fear of socializing. Now I was a grown man, not exactly a talkative person but I’ve held conversations before. It wasn’t entirely my fault; he didn’t talk much either. Actually, looking back on things, I couldn’t recall Uncle Dave having been in a deep conversation with anybody. No, I was off the hook, I might be a man of few words, but so was Uncle Dave and if he wasn’t able to keep a conversation alive, then why had I been so hard on myself?

Later, Brandy told me how much she enjoyed Uncle Dave’s company. Apparently she, Uncle Dave, and Grandma had sat around the table and laughed and conversed for hours. At first this devastated my newfound liberty, but the more I thought about it, it didn’t surprise me that Brandy could talk with him with no trouble. Brandy specializes in silent men; she married me after all.

In the evenings before the wedding, Uncle Dave kept himself and the rest of us up all night with a horrible cough. It was so horrible, in fact, that by the end of the wedding several people were already convinced of Dave’s impending fate. Less than two months after the wedding Dave died. His passing was very sad, but not entirely unexpected. Uncle Dave was getting older, and had been a smoker ever since almost anyone can remember.

Dave’s funeral was on a Thursday of a difficult week of work, so I decided not to go. I felt bad about the decision, not really because I needed to say farewell to my uncle, an exchange which would undoubtedly be short & sweet, but because there were other, living members of the family that would be there that I wanted to see. Not the least amongst these would be Dave’s daughter, my cousin Erika, and her daughters Jamie, Andrea and Shaun.

Memories of Erika are among my first memories ever. So early in fact, that I have no clear visualization of these memories. When I try to picture it, my mind cheats and brings me images that I know for sure to be in my childhood photo album. But I know from very early on, I considered the name Erika to be synonymous with sweetness, loving, kindness, and protection from my older brother. Erika stayed with my family for a short while when she was a teenager and when I was very young. I can’t remember how young I was, from the photo album I’d guess four or five years old. I was young enough that I don’t recall having a clear understanding that she was my cousin; I considered her more of a deputy-mother at the time. I was undoubtedly more than she signed up for… I recall that during her tenure I went directly to her for most affection as well as when Matt and I would fight and I wanted him to be punished for something. I think she passed most of Matt’s punishments off to my parents despite my repeated efforts, but Erika gracefully doled out the affection I was seeking. Erika easily became my favorite family member and remained so until I learned that it’s not really polite to have a favorite family member.

Erika’s short stay with us ended quickly, and in what seemed like no time she was married and planning a family of her own. Jamie came first, a child prodigy who spoke with a crystal clear voice in an extensive vocabulary at the age of two. Jamie and my own little sister Rachael were so close in age that they naturally paired off when anywhere near each other. We saw them rarely, but when occasion arose, Rachael and Jamie were off together instantly.

Andrea came next, a beautiful & spirited brown eyed girl who resembled her mother. Andrea was usually not included in Jamie and Rachael’s games, but it didn’t seem to bother her much. She had an independent spirit and didn’t seem to care what the other girls did, she was just fine on her own, thank you very much. I was seven years older than this child, but still wilted at the slightest criticism, I looked in awe at this toddler who had me beat already.

One holiday, Thanksgiving I think, I befriended the three year old Andrea. I was usually a very silent and reserved child, but Erika’s bright eyed girls somehow gave me license to act like a complete fool. Appealing to her sense of orneriness, I tried to keep her from touching me and by the end of the night Andrea was my best friend. Somewhere buried in hundreds of family photographs there’s a picture of the two of us sitting side by side in front of Grandma’s fireplace that evening.

Andrea was a few years older the next time I saw her, and I have no idea if she remembered that Thanksgiving. Erika and the children moved in with us for a short while and then moved to the house across the street. Of course Andrea and I still played now and then, but I was mostly attached to her two year old sister Shaun Angela. This new adorable child wouldn’t so much as make eye contact with me on the first couple of days. But using the same slapstick humor I charmed Andrea with years earlier I finally got Shaun to play with me, a game where she would blow at me and I would pretend as though the force from her tiny pursed lips would pitch me across the room. But even after a day or two of this game, and her constant giggling, no one could get her to say my name.

It was my mother who stepped in with an idea of how we could get Shaun to address me. Mom and I had recently read Richard Adams’ “Watership Down” and she decided that the wisecracking rabbit named Bluebell reminded her of me. Shaun instantly took to the name, and I was Bluebell thereafter. Most boys, the shy sensitive type included, would not normally go for any nickname with the word “Bell” in it, but it was a really, really funny rabbit, and I was entirely charmed by Shaun, and probably would have accepted the nickname “Pixie” if that’s what she’d chosen to call me. At any rate, no one ever called me Bluebell unless Shaun was around, and none of my classmates at school ever heard mention of it. To this day, I have no regrets about Bluebell and would proudly pronounce it publicly if the occasion needed.

About a year went by with Erika and family next door. For me it was a year of acting silly and performing piggybacks. Shaun gave me some valuable practice at being wrapped around a young girl’s finger, experience that I would use soon with my baby sister Kristin, and then later with my own daughter Rose. Unfortunately, my time with Shaun and Andrea, and Rachael’s time with Jamie came to an end as the family moved south, closer to more immediate relatives. I always intended to write, but never finished a letter. I missed them so much at first that it hurt, then later I doubted they’d remember me much.

As it happened, the next time I saw them was 13 years later at my Aunt Niecee’s funeral. I gave Jamie a hug, it wasn’t so hard to see her grown up, she was practically Rachael’s twin, and I’d been watching Rachael grow up this whole time. Andrea and Shaun however were a different story. I was grateful that Andrea wasn’t very tall as it allowed me to picture her as a child, but she was wearing too much makeup and she was also pregnant. I wanted to scream “You’re supposed to be in Kindergarten!”

Shaun on the other hand allowed me no such illusion; she had grown tall, taller than me. I could still see the darling little girl’s features in the face of this beautiful young woman but I felt lost. Shaun still called me Bluebell and swore she remembered me though she’d only been three years old when they’d left. Could it be that she remembered me with the same fleeting thoughts in which I remembered her mother? Was it possible that I was as special to her as Erika had been to me as a child?

I exchanged a few pleasantries and introduced them to my wife and children. I told Andrea that Rose had the same spirited self-reliance that she had possessed as a child. This seemed to surprise Andrea, and she seemed doubtful of my memories of her personality. After the funeral, food and drinks were served. I went and spoke with Erika and Shaun for a short while, bringing Rosie with me to ensure a topic of conversation. I’ve been using Rose for social armor since she was born. Her spirit and beauty provide a distraction when I can’t think of anything to say.

It was good to see them all. I tried to make conversation with them, but as a man of few words I found myself missing the days when I could just fall back on slapstick humor. It would be so much easier if I could pretend that I didn’t want them to touch me or that they could blow me across the room. Physical play can entirely remove the need for words with children. You can bond with a child easily with absolutely no conversational skills. Uncle Dave had undoubtedly been aware of this, years ago when he slugged me in the arm whenever he could.

It turns out that Uncle Dave’s funeral would have been my last chance to see Andrea. A week after Dave’s death, his granddaughter Andrea died in a traffic accident. While everyone sadly accepted Uncle Dave’s death, we violently rejected Andrea’s. We cried to God, demanding an appeal, like angry sporting fans screaming “Foul!” at a deaf referee. She was young, beautiful, and had a two year old child. Such a death is unnatural, and its merciless reality is weighing heavily in all our hearts and minds.

Andrea’s funeral is on a weekend, I will be attending. I don’t expect a happy reunion with Erika, Jamie and Shaun who have lost both Dave and Andrea in such a short time. Here all words will be hollow; none can ease the pain in their lives. An embrace, an entirely physical communication will be the only small help I can offer to comfort their endless sorrow.