Unkie

The day before I was scheduled to take my National Board assessments, my mom and I went to Columbia and stayed the night so we wouldn't be pressed for time trying to get there in morning work traffic. Shortly after we found the building where I would be testing that night, my mom got a call from my aunt telling us that my dear sweet Unkie had passed away. If you trace back on my blog a little ways, you will be able to read all about Unkie. In short, he was my grandfather...or the closest thing I'd ever had to one. Both of my parents' fathers passed away before I was born, and Unkie (my grandmother's brother) moved here from Florida just three months before I was born and stayed here until he passed away this month. He was 92. That wasn't old enough. Before he died, in the words of my cousin, Joy, I never imagined a world without Unkie. For some reason, I thought he'd live forever. I know that's not logical, or even vaguely intelligent, but I wholeheartedly believed it.

As I sat back and remembered all the good times with him, I cried and cried...not just because my Unkie was gone, but because my babies that I haven't had will never know him. That breaks my heart.

“Elegy for Unkie”

To the world, he was Clifford Bergstrom.
To all of us, he was our Unkie.
And to him, many of us were “Charlie.”

He was a veteran paratrooper who fought for our freedom,
And a kindhearted soul who loved us more than life.
When we were kids, anything a hug couldn’t fix,
A pack of M&Ms could,
And we knew we would find them in Unkie’s drawer.

When summer came, he cleaned the pool,
preparing it for the wave of children
that would soon run around Lois Street.
Rides home from school with Unkie
were like trips to the amusement park,
careening over the 378 bypass
at speeds our parents would never go.
Perhaps he learned to drive
from watching Mark Martin.

Unkie loved a lot of things…
Hamburger Helper, Chicken McNuggets, lemondade,
donating to charities, races at Daytona, piano music.
He could put the world back together with a tube of super glue.
And no one knew Young and the Restless like Unkie.

Of course, he had lots of hobbies…
following NASCAR, working in the yard,
carpentry, and hanging with Uncle Temus,
but Unkie’s favorite hobby was us.
He was a family man, evident from his bedroom
wallpapered in our photographs
to his constant attendance at family dinners
until just a few weeks ago.
He never tired of our neighborhood-wide
“Happy New Year,” and he was always around
for weddings and babies and birthdays.

He was a hero, not only in his service to this country
but in his service to his family,
A family that was forever changed when a sweet
little man moved to Nanny’s in 1984,
Living one of the fullest lives we could ever imagine…
even if 92 years just weren’t enough for us.