Uncle G’s Last Story

Hey everyone! I wrote this story for my family to capture a few of the beautiful memories we have shared together over the years. 🙂

My childhood is filled with memories from my aunt and uncle’s dining room table. My Aunt Nancy seated on one end, elegantly holding a glass of red wine; my Uncle Gordon on the other end, talking. Discussing politics, telling stories from childhood, theorizing about this and that. Always authoritative and articulate.

In between my sophisticated aunt and eloquent uncle, the rest of us filled out the long, formal dining room table with our ridiculous shenanigans. Fiddling with the antique “Happy Birthday” jack-in-the-box, which my little cousin Dalton sprinted to snatch out of the cabinet as soon as the cake was brought to the table. His sister Jasmine, two years my junior, belting out songs through deep, rich belches. Howling in laughter over silly nicknames – “Lizard” (cousin Liz), T-Dawg (me – Tina), “Jazzercize” (Jasmine). Cousin Liz chatting about anything – it didn’t matter – lighting the room and all the kids’ hearts with her husky, contagious laugh. Stuffing our faces with Aunt Linda’s Christmas cookies. Eating ice cream with absurdly tiny silver spoons, discovered while snooping through one of our aunt’s silverware drawers. Dalton buttering his hunk of New York steak and everyone giving him a hard time over not eating vegetables. Inventing nonsense songs – our favorite of which was titled “Bozzy Canoe.”

Birthdays, Christmases, New Years, summer swim days. We spent much of our summers in their pool and most holidays at that dining room table. Our gatherings were full of joy, laughter and foolishness.

Sometimes after dinner, my younger cousins and I would sneak down the winding hallway into one of the many unused bedrooms, where we would make prank phone calls to businesses we dialed from the yellow pages. We called beauty salons to ask if they could dye our hair “fire engine red with green highlights.” We sang “Love Shack” to the poor employees of bowling alleys and gymnastic centers – except we changed the lyric for some unknown reason to “clown shack.” Clown shack, baaaaby, CLOWN SHACK!

Uncle Gordon had a shirt that said, “It took me 60 years to look this good.” He was always healthy and seemed a decade younger than he really was; he was still golfing and travelling the world in his 80s. We all expected him to live forever. Grandma and Grandpa – his parents (my dad’s parents) – had lived into their 90s.

At the age of 85, Uncle Gordon was diagnosed with prostate cancer. Living in a different state, consumed by my teaching job and caring for my toddler, I didn’t know how sick he was until a quick text exchange with my cousin Karin one morning just before work.

I got on the Southwest Airlines app, plugging in dozens of date combinations, calculating costs as I agonized over the idea of missing class and leaving my three-year-old.

A few days later, at eight months pregnant, I was flying “home” to Sacramento.

My first day there was everything you hope for when someone is in their final days – family gathered, laughing, telling stories.

This time, we were gathered upstairs in Uncle Gordon’s bedroom instead of at the formal dining room table. Over the years, my cousins and I had tromped through every inch of their house, exploring every antique hatbox, rummaging through drawers, squeezing ourselves behind every fine piece of furniture during hide-and-seek. But we had rarely, if ever, stepped foot into their bedroom. Now, we sat on chairs around their bed, where a smaller, thinner Uncle G lay covered with a white sheet.

Though I was taken aback by his frail physical state, I couldn’t hold back a smile when he started speaking. His mind was as sharp as ever, and he began telling stories. My aunts, cousins, parents and I spent the entire day floating in and out of his bedroom, listening to the Klein family history. No one had any place else to be.

While the others mixed themselves drinks, I snacked on crackers, spreads and nuts at the little bar. As I twirled around on the familiar, squishy stools, my cousin Jasmine came downstairs to pour another drink. We chatted briefly.

“I have to get back upstairs – Grandpa’s in the middle of telling us his life story!”

I followed her up. Uncle G was going through all their childhood years in North Dakota – their moves, all the cities they had lived in, Grandpa’s (his father’s) jobs – every detail to a tee. He catalogued the name of every neighbor, every school they had attended, every one of their teachers. Aunt Nancy had a pad of paper out and occasionally took down notes.

Every couple of sentences, someone would interrupt with a question.

“It that the same house where…?”

“Wasn’t Grandpa working at the hotel during that time?”

“Was that the same kid who…?”

Uncle G answered each question as he always had, authoritatively and certain, though now his voice was strained and dry. The physical power behind it was fizzling out, but it maintained its same commanding spirit.

As the hours passed and the alcohol flowed, the energy in the room grew along with the frequency of the interruptions. At a certain point, Uncle Gordon’s annoyance at being constantly interrupted became apparent.

The rest of us, as usual, failed to take the situation seriously and merely urged him on after each interference.

“Sorry! Okay, keep going.”

He was laboring more to speak and kept asking for a wet mouth sponge to ease his dry throat.

“He’s getting tired of talking,” said his daughter Karin finally.

“Well, I would be more excited to keep talking if I felt that any of it was getting through!” he exclaimed exasperatedly.

He was probably being serious, but I heard only humor ringing through his raspy voice. The response made my stomach flip flop with joy and nostalgia. The words and tone were such classic Uncle G.

As Uncle Gordon grew too exhausted to continue his stories, my dad (his brother) uncharacteristically took over.

First, he went on a long tangent about how he once volunteered to be part of a parade at school, which was completely out of character for him. He had found the whole event to be incredibly stupid. On the parade float, however, he did get to meet a girl who eventually went on to be Miss North Dakota and competed for Miss USA.

My dad then proceeded to tell us about making May Day flowers in elementary school.

“I just thought it was the stupidest thing! I threw mine in the trash on the way out of class, and the teacher was so upset.”

We all roared with laughter.

From there, my dad launched into his favorite grade school story.

“My first-grade teacher had this stack of words that she would quiz us on at the end of class each day. But it never occurred to her to shuffle them, so of course we just had them memorized in order. One day we had a substitute teacher who mixed up the words before showing them to us. And, of course, we didn’t know any of them! When the teacher got back, she was so mad at us! I just thought, ‘you’re an idiot.’ She wasn’t very nice.”

I’ve heard this story at least a half dozen times. I still laugh every time.

“I guess when I was a kid, I just thought everything was so… stupid all the time. Nothing ever made any sense.”

It was strange to witness my dad as the center of attention, recounting his childhood stories so animatedly. 

“I’m glad I had those two margaritas,” he commented on the way home that night, a twinkle of humor in his eyes. “So I could sort of open up and talk more.”

The next day, Uncle G barely spoke. The tone in the house was somber, and Aunt Nancy never took her notepad back out. My mom and aunt spent much of the day consulting with the hospice nurses. Karin and Liz took turns swabbing their father’s mouth with a wet sponge in an effort to keep him comfortable.

I gave my uncle and aunt a kiss on the cheek as I left, which didn’t make any sense as our family doesn’t kiss. It’s a strange feeling to kiss someone knowing it’s the last time you will see them.

Flying out of Sacramento, I reflected on Uncle G’s last stories, told with such precision and attention to detail even as he struggled against his drying, dying vocal chords. Face pressed against the cold airplane window, I suddenly found myself fighting back laughter as I remembered my Grandpa’s final words exactly 20 years earlier.

Grandpa Klein was a storyteller like Uncle Gordon. A brilliant man who attended school only until the sixth grade, Grandpa seemingly remembered every detail from his entire life. He often interrupted whoever who was speaking at family dinners to correct them on the date or interject the name of the town or person being referenced.

“No, that was actually in 1952, not ‘54. That was the year we moved to the blue house in Bishop to open the hotel…”

“No, that wasn’t Harold Fray who worked on the farm with us that summer; it was the older brother, Darrel…”

One sunny afternoon, just a few days before Grandpa’s death, my grandma was recounting memories about their life together some fifty years in the past. During one story, she cited the dates and towns to set the context, then proceeded to explain the sequence of events with great attention to detail. It had been a couple days since Grandpa had stopped being able to speak.

From his bed on the other side of the room, we noticed the white sheet that covered him was moving. We realized he was waving his arms around in great agitation. His voice came in a strained, hoarse whisper, a long pause between each word.

“No!” he gasped frantically. He waved his arms, white sheet rippling in desperation. “No! That’s… not… how… it was!”