My Uncle, a Hero

Posted on 14 September 2009

Preamble: this is an introspective post that has nothing to do with writing.  Just saying.

Every so often in life, I think of my late Uncle Steve.  I feel bad that I can’t remember exactly when he died without looking it up, even to the point of not remembering if I was in high school still or in college, and also somewhat worse that he touched me far more profoundly in death than in life.  Let me tell you why.

See, I didn’t really know Steve all that well.  Yeah, he was my kind of loopy uncle that was a cop and a TV repairman.  His son, who is three years younger than me, was cool to play with, even in those years of childhood where even a single year difference seems an eternity, but that hardly helped me know Steve.  And then, one day, my dad sits me down and tells me that Steve died of a massive heart attack early in the morning.  He was only 43.

At the wake and funeral, I learned quite a bit more about Steve.  He was the kind of guy that went out of his way to be as helpful as he could.  If he fixed your TV or fridge, and you couldn’t afford what it should have cost, he let you pay what you could and called it even.  And even for that business model, which really does not promote expansion in the impoverished and dying coal camps of southern Illinois, he wanted to continue to expand what he did.  Even when his friends would say, “Steve, if you buy a watermelon for a dollar and sell it for a dollar, it doesn’t do you any good to buy a bigger truck to haul watermelons,” he would just shrug it off and barrel on.

On the night he died, he had faced the grim fact that the bank was foreclosing on his business the next morning.  His dream—his life—was shattering.  As was often his wont when he was stressed and could not sleep, he went out riding with the night shift patrol.  They stopped at the gas station, and he stayed in the car while the officers went in for a coffee.  When they came back, he was dead.  Yeah, the autopsy said heart attack.  We said broken heart.

So why do I think of Steve?  Well, because I kind of admire him.  He had his rough edges, yes.  He smoked and drank, and definitely lacked business sense, but by all that anyone could call holy, he was a good man.  I only wish his story did not have to be so tragic, but such is this world that it chews up the good and spits it back out.

So yeah, Steven, here’s to you on no day in way particularly special, and here’s to living a dream no matter what.  Let us all just take the lesson to heart that even the greatest dreams with the most well meaning heart behind them can break.  May you live your dream, and my I live mine.