Another Hero Gone...!

A man can be cursed or blessed with the blood that flows in his veins!  I have been blessed, now, for all of my life as the blood of several generations of Laws men is in me!  Today, my daddy’s brother, my Uncle Oscar died and I can’t think of another man, after my father, who meant more to me.  My uncle had a smile that he could put on you that made you think that the sun wasn’t doing it’s best to light up your world, by comparison.  He made me feel like I was the most important person in his world whenever he saw me and that feeling was equal to the sweetest pie, the coolest water, the shadiest place! It was fantastic, indeed!  When I visited him, throughout my life and his, we had special signals; the wink of an eye, a nod of the head, a clucking noise that said, Nephew…Uncle, I love you like you can’t imagine…but we could, ‘because I loved that man like he was my father.  He and my Old Man looked so much alike that I could believe that they were twins, when I was young.  The laughed alike, walked alike, talked alike!  My Pops used to comment that I was hard-headed just like my Uncle Oscar and he disciplined me like their father, my grandfather, did my uncle because we had that same untamed streak in us.  My uncle got a lot of whippings when his was growing up and so did I.  I wore that fact like a badge of honor because it was something that bound me to him, forever.  We prescribed to the notion that we were as tough as nails and could take whatever our fathers could dish out and we didn’t shy away from that distinction. 

My uncle was preceded in death by his own two sons and at both of my cousins’ funerals, he presented a stone-faced, hard-core man who accepted such instances with a stoic, matter-of-fact reality that belied his torn heart.  I will not try to maintain that persona as I write this ode to another of my fallen heroes.  I want the world to know that I sit at this computer, my current post, with tears streaming down my face, and a pain in my heart that is close to overwhelming, to say to you that I am, a part, damaged goods, because another one of my teachers, another one of my mentors, another one of my heroes has died!  Uncle Oscar, I will miss you, filled with an emptiness that my feelings won’t ever try to hide!  Lovin’ you, forever!  Your nephew.