Red Bank Blues 2004:

Blood on Blood

Scars in common

Bitter sour week, here. My Uncle John died early Sunday morning. I hadn’t seen him in 25 years. Our families were estranged. My father and he had a disagreement that dissolved the paternal side of my family tree.

I received a phone call three weeks ago from a man who looked me up in the phone book. He was tasked by my injured and dying Uncle John to find a lost brother, my father. Instead he found me. I was listed. I was in the book. The man left a message on my answering machine. He said, “John’s in intensive care and he wants to see his brother; your father. He wants to mend old wounds.”

I called the man back and listened to him tell me of Uncle John’s specific and not so specific injuries. Indeed, he was in intensive care. And indeed that is what he needed. I thanked the man and the man asked God to bless me. Lightening hasn’t yet struck.

I proceeded to call dad. Tough phone call. Caught him off guard. There was a lot of silence and decision making going on his end. I could tell. In a soft voice he said, “I’ll call you back later this week, PK.”

My father spent the next two weeks with his long lost brother John. The time they had lost. The love they had not.

My Uncle John died early Sunday morning. I had spent that Saturday evening talking with Nancy about him while we smoked and drank innocent cocktails on my front steps. We were amazed at the speed of the clouds sheening the blue moon. She had only come by to talk, and that’s what we did. We spent the evening exposing various scars.

My Uncle John had two children. Boys. My cousins. I was estranged from them for 25 years.

We met again at Uncle John’s viewing. We touched upon the seam of needless estrangement and gathered all we not so strangely had in common. We talked of girls and high school and sports and wooden toy trains.

Uncle John was just laying there. Bearded wearing a handsome bolo tie. In a coffin.

I cannot imagine how difficult and strange it was for my cousins. For it was their dad in the bolo tie. The tie that he had worn for 25 years, at least. I reentered their life through the door of a funeral home. How difficult and strange.

We talked with ease and stood in staring silence with comfort. As it’s been said, “Nothing feels better than blood on blood.”

For as difficult as this year has been, it is nothing compared to that of my cousins. Perhaps this is the turnstrap that whips us back into family. Or at least brothers with scar tissue not of our own making.

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