Lost Wax

The brightest flames burn quickest, they say. Earlier this year, I saw how awful this statement can be. For Christmas, I’m glad this isn’t an unbreakable rule.

My Uncle Mel is a Marine. He has the crew cut and the anchor tattooed down his forearm to prove it. He was the first man in my family I met with a tattoo since my family frowned on it. He raised kids and grandkids and even me, the erstwhile prodigal son, at some points of his life. Even after his children had all grown up and moved away, he kept his basement stocked with toys and spare beds for visiting rugrats. His basement was a treasure trove and his yard was a wild landscape filled with all the mad imaginings of a child’s mind.

He had the first piano I ever remember playing in his basement. It was an electric organ of sorts and had this distinct sound when you switched it on when the fan motor switched on. All that air slowly being pushed into the pipes concealed in the wooden body. Vague hints at Eighty-Eight notes whispering at you to become Bach, or Mozart or some demented child in a frenzied cacophony of jubilant notes. I don’t know how that old piano held up to the beating we subjected it to, but it did and kept making music as sweet as any of we kids could pull out of it. I suppose that piano was a lot like my uncle in that respect. He just never stopped.

My Aunt Esther was his sweetheart from Day One. She stuck with him through all the craziness that is a military life and they cranked out some awesome memories and enriched the lives of all around them. She was the warm glow that filled their house with knick-nacks, apple pie, and loving discipline because my Uncle loved kids too much to ever be stern. She has been sick for over 12 years now and my amazing uncle has been her lifeline, protector and caretaker. But my Uncle can’t be that anymore.

He’s dying. He’s bought maybe another week of time with blood transfusions from when they found him unconscious on the kitchen floor. My Aunt probably can’t even remember a life without him. Everyone is expecting her to follow him. There’s a bit of romance in that thought, I suppose.

The hearts that they touched with their generosity and love, mine included, are near bursting today. Their Granddaughter Holly was married today, a week after they expected my uncle to be dead. He got to see them after the fact, since hospitals aren’t really the most chipper setting for the lighting of a new candle; reserved rather for the extinguishing of those soon to be lightless wax statues.This renewal taking place so close to the impending close of these amazing peoples time here offers some small amount of anesthetic, I assume, to those involved. But to those of us so far away, it seems just a detail. I’ll be within a couple hours of them for Christmas, so I’m renting a car to drive up there and visit my aunt and uncle, or maybe just a headstone, I don’t know yet.

Death hits me hard this year. Harder than perhaps it should, but I don’t think there is any measure of what is right and wrong to feel here. So here at the end of all this, I look around and I see what they did with their lives, what they did as those flames burned steadily away melting the candle of their lives together. What they created with all that lost wax. And I am amazed at all they have done, and ashamed…