Life, and the opposite

When Libby was just an infant, our next-door neighbor died. It was such an interesting process; he just gave up the will to live. He stopped eating, and then he stopped getting out of bed; then he stopped waking up. And yet it was almost a week of uninterrupted sleeping before he finally passed. His wife, though she was a good fifty years older than I, was my friend. Every day I talked to her, asking how she was, how he was...

He became an entry in my (non-online) journal at the time, because his passing was somehow part of our life, part of our daily doings.

I was just thinking about that, just now, as I wrote a small note in my Uncle's online obituary guest book. How interesting, I thought, that my neighbor (whose name I can't even remember now! Though I still remember his wife Leona...) got a mention in my journal, and not my own Uncle Boyd. It never even crossed my mind, until minutes ago, to mention him.

Boyd is my mother's sister's husband. He was an intellectual—a professor and department dean of social work at the University of Utah. I can't really remember any good conversations we ever had; either I was too young to converse cogently, or our interests perhaps too disparate. He wasn't the sort who bounced other peoples' grandchildren on his knee, so our communications were brief ("How are the kids? How many?") though cordial. But he was a good man—kind, always smiling and greeting my politely. I know my aunt is really going to struggle without him, he was a very doting husband and she is physically declining.

And though I had no idea when I would see him again, different yet is the thought that I won't see him again. He's moved on, finished up all his list of Things To Do here. No more earthly cares or sorrows will pain him again.

Uncle Boyd Oviatt, though our spheres rarely touched, there is a small void where you were. I'll remember you with fondness.