Eight years ago tonight, my uncle passed away, at the blessed age of 90. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, and had spent the last months of his life in a hospice. When I saw him on his 90th birthday, the previous January, he was a well-to-do nonagenarian, his usual affable, smiling self. Ten months later, there was little left of him. I was relieved he had been spared further suffering.
My uncle, my father's eldest brother, had been married, but his wife had pre-deceased him in 1998, also after having cancer. They had lived together in the same tied cottage for 44 years, and my uncle stayed on until he died in 2017. It fell to members of the family to clear out ten skipfuls of detritus from years gone by. I don't think they ever bought new furniture, and the books were of similar vintage. I remember a ginger cat, and, from further back, chickens.
Although he never had a family, my uncle was very fond of my siblings and myself, and supported our mother when she was in the final years of her life, up to 2008. Following the death of my father in 2022, there is only one sibling left of the four. My father's second brother was killed in a motorbike accident in 1954, when he crashed into an unilluminated American army truck, which did not have permission to be out and about. The youngest, my auntie, remains, now aged 78.
Tempus fugit.
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