sadness

my uncle, Thomas E Lomax, passed away yesterday.  He had been suffering for many years with the degenerative disease, Parkinsons.  He is at rest now, he is no longer trapped within a body that had long ceased to obey the impulses and dictates of his very organized and structured mind, and for that I am grateful.  But I am sad.  I loved my uncle and did not show it very well in his last years.  I revered my uncle, he was my hero in so many ways.

Between two husbands, my grandmother gave birth to ten children.  three girls, the first two children born and the youngest.  seven boys, of which my uncle Thomas was the third male child and the fifth child in total.  Three-Fifths, by the way, is the percentage of a human being that blacks were considered to be during the framing of the Constitution of the United States of America.  Not important right now.

My uncle was a mechanic, a fisherman, a photographer, an avid bowler, a security guard and a mill man, where he lost an eye.  He was a gambler, a father, a dutiful son to his parents, he was named after my grandfather, his mother's second husband.  He was an avid reader, he was an enthusiast for music of all genres, but particularly old soul and jazz.  He had one of the few reel-to-reel tape players i'd ever seen in real life.  He was an activist and a revolutionist for his people, and he, along with my grandparents, instilled that in both his younger siblings and his nephews.  He was a great thinker, a natural philosopher.  Before I'd ever heard the term for it, he'd explained the principle of 'planned obsolescence', and when I finally heard someone talking about it by name i realized just how sharp my uncle's mind was.

That mind ended up trapped in a body that was withering for years.  In the end, he was reduced to being a brilliant mind in a body that functioned no better than a two month old toddler, and it broke my heart.

My family has had its share of very stupid feuds, little border skirmishes and pointless ground wars over principle and posturing.  I've never known my uncle to engage in any of that.  I hope,with all his siblings old enough now to know that the gates of the cemetery are closer than ever, that they think about the worth of bullshit and silly, trifling conflict and find a way to honor his memory by putting past childish things aside and bonding together from this point forward.

but i'm a dreamer, and i miss my uncle very much.