It was the morning after he had died. I felt numb. I knew it was exactly how he would have picked to go and for that I felt grateful. He was present in every phase of my childhood and young adulthood. There was nothing flashy about him. He was consistent and predictable. He was solid and stable. He was a rock in the small community that I was raised in. He was a rock in the family that I was raised in. He left a huge footprint on my soul.
When I was in college I wrote a letter to the editor about him. I wrote about how when I was a child my mother would read me a book about a shoe maker who worked so hard and when he couldn’t stand to work anymore he would go to bed with work undone. When he woke in the morning his work would be finished because some elfs had come at night and done the work. My uncle John was an elf in real life, in the flesh and blood. He could always be found serving the community in some way or another, he was relentless in his ability to give.
I woke to the doors of the three season porch wide open. It was December so the cold air flooded the house and met me the moment I stepped from my bed. Moments later, the front door opened. I went and closed it. After I took the boys down the driveway to meet the bus, I returned to another open door. I closed it, started to walk down the hallway and yet another door opened. The lights turned off and on in the home over the next 24 hours and countless times I shut doors. My brother and mother commented on the open doors and lights being turned on. He was unsettled as he wasn’t ready to transition yet.
A tear rolled down my cheek as I explained to him that he was dead. “No, Er” he said back to me and went on to ask me where his dog was. He had been looking for his dog, Dozer, who frequently went with him on his forestry jobs. I looked into his crystal blue eyes and explained that Aunt Deb had Dozer. He left without another word.
He came back the next day, flashed a smile and transitioned without a word.
