Remembering

My Uncle Brian passed away a couple of days ago. I wrote this piece to be read at his funeral. Wanted to share. All we have is now sweet friends.
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When someone we know and love passes on, we are called into a season of remembering. 

Remembering who they were, the life they led, the experiences we shared. 

It’s true, I wasn’t close with my uncle Brian. We moved away from Iowa when I was a baby and while we came back for a couple of weeks every summer during my childhood, visits became less and less frequent as my brother and I grew into our own adult lives, determined as all becoming people are, to leave youth behind in search of a beckoning future. 

Looking back and remembering however, these visits stand out as some of the sweetest, most significant moments of my young life, and weaved throughout all of them, steadfast and sure, is Brian. 

His smile, bright and big. 

Him in his easy chair by the television. 

Episodes of Pepe Le Pew.

Shared meals of his mother’s – my grandmother’s – goulash and green beans – lutefisk (sometimes) and lefse (always). 

A bundle of embossed pencils at Christmas.

This last one, the pencils, is the one that has had the most profound and lasting impact on my memory of him. 

Every year, without fail, Brian would send all of his many nieces and one nephew a pack of about twenty five pencils with our own individual names printed on them. They were always carefully wrapped, with a handwritten tag, and you knew before you opened the present what was waiting for you. To be honest, as a kid, it wasn’t the most exciting thing to recieve, but in remembering all the eighteen Christmases of my youth, it is one of the few gifts that I can recall with absolute clarity, and it is also the one that brings the biggest smile to my face and warmth to my heart. 

Separated by time and space, Brian was not obliged to send anything at all. But he did, every year. And that mattered. It mattered because it both reminded us all that we were remembered by him and called us to remember him in return. It was, as all gifts are meant to be, a reciprocity of remembrance. 

So even though I can only recall one Christmas spent with him in Iowa, he was with us every year, without fail. And he will continue to be as we navigate our own lives. As I move through my own. 

I think a lot of times, as humans, we like to make everything really complicated, when in actuality, much of what’s important in life is simple. Sometimes all it takes is a pack of pencils to know you are thought of, to know you are loved. 

In this season of remembering, I have a lot of wishes. I wish I knew Brian better. I wish his life was what he wanted it to be. But more than anything, I wish that he finds his peace and rests easy in the knowledge that he left a simple act of beautiful kindness behind. He gave me that, and I am grateful. 

I will remember. 

I would like to end with these words from The Call of the Wild by Jack London:

“Old memories were coming upon him fast, and he was stirring to them as of old he stirred to the realities of which they were the shadows. He had done this thing before, somewhere in that other and dimly remembered world, and he was doing it again, now, running free in the open, the unpacked earth underfoot, the wide sky overhead.”