jan 5 2006

my uncle walt collected everything. he and his brother, my uncle johnny, lived in the house that they grew up in all their lives. they accumulated an entire housefull of possesions, some treasure, some junk.

my uncle johnny died when i was ten or eleven, leaving my uncle walt alone in the house with his dog minnie, about six televisions, his stamps, cigars, baseball cards, coins, and souvenirs from the war. he went away once and minnie was left in the care of my grandmother and since my grandmother has never driven, this also involved my family. the day before he came back, we tried to clean his house. i remember trying to scrub the grime off of two tiles of his basement kitchen for about fifteen minutes before my mom told me to give up. we all probably worked for an hour or two, not making a noticable dent in decades of bachelor pad indifference. we left in defeat.

later that night, my mom, dad, and grandmother went back to let minnie out again and she ran away. she was a manchester terrier who was grossly overfed, resembling a small keg of beer supported by four chopstick legs. she had never been an outside dog, and from the smell of my uncle's house, she may not have even been taken out on a daily basis. she made her break at freedom and disappeared, most likely running herself to death considering her physical state paired with her lifelong denial of basic doggie desires of running and exploring. my family felt horrible knowing that this was my uncle's sole companion. i'm not sure how he reacted, but within a very short time from minnie's departure, minnie II came on the scene, quickly growing to the same proportions as minnie I.

my uncle passed away about a year after this incident. he was having health issues but he was stubborn and wouldn't go to the doctor's until he was so sick, he couldn't make it down the ruins of his steep front steps without stopping at nearly every step. my mother somehow managed to get him into the car and to the hospital. the next day, my mom and grandma went to visit him, and seeing that he wasn't in his room, asked a nurse where mr. wojtowitz was.

"oh, he expired."

my grandmother was crushed.

in the weeks and months following his death, my family spent the majority of all free time cleaning out his house. it was bizzare to almost daily enter into the material shell that my uncle walt left behind. it took the better part of that year to salvage, throw away, and clean out what was my grandmother's home growing up. i think this made the task so much more difficult than simply cleaning the mess of two men's lives; it was also my grandmother's life, and to some extent, my mother's life, having spent time there as a child, visiting her grandmother.

my family held on to many relics from the house. some have managed to find their way to my place, including this bird, which i just received as a christmas gift from my gramma this year. we had an ongoing joke within our house when someone would come over and ask where we found such an odd toy/decoration/piece of clothing/etc, we would look at each other and all say "UNCLE WALT'S!" and we'd all crack up.

i did not know my either of my uncles very well and being a rather shy child, felt intimidated and uncomfortable on holidays and at family dinners they attended. my uncle walt would tell us jokes containing swear words, which my parents outwardly disapproved of, but it was apparrent that they also found the situation akwardly amusing. he bought me a set of encyclopedias from a grocery store when i was ten and he taught me how to remove stamps from envelopes without damaging the stamp when i became interested in stamp collecting. my uncle johnny was quiet and also seemed to be a little shy. he walked with a cane because he had polio when he was a child and one leg was shorter than the other. he worked at sears, then at 7-eleven, until he was held up one night. i know that they were both good men who lived interesting lives, and part of me wishes i had known them better. but another part of me knows that if they were alive today, i would probably feel the same way around them as i do around my only remaining uncle on my grandmother's side, her brother-in-law, tony. i feel achingly sad when i see him, but petrified when it comes to talking to him. he lives just a couple streets away from jason and i, with his bachelor son. his wife, my aunt helen, and my gramma's only remaining sibling, died about seven or eight years ago. he wore a bow tie to uncle walt's funeral and his son was so embarressed and kept apoligizing for how he looked. i wish i could talk to him, i wish i knew how.

sometimes, family feels so sad and lonely.