Uncle Dana

Uncle Dana and Gramma Sheila

What I remember best about my Uncle Dana was watching The Twilight Zone with him. He rambled when he spoke, and he had these little ears, he kept his hair short, and if it wasn’t for the fetal alcohol syndrome, he might’ve looked like Tom Hanks. Unfortunately, life just wasn’t kind to my poor Uncle, and that’s a damn shame now that he’s dead. It was a damn shame to begin with. I know it doesn’t go good to come off pitiful these days, but the story I got is the only one to tell. I feel like I have to. No one else is really there to remember. We were watching The Twilight Zone, an episode with Elizabeth Montgomery, and he said, “Gee whiz, I’d like to have gotten to know her. She sure is beautiful.” And the only thing my 21 year old self could think was this poor guy, he’ll never have anyone. Of course, what I did was engage with the hell yeahs, because she’s a hot ticket, and who wouldn’t have liked to, right? I felt bad for him. Neither of us was very old, though, and I figured he might find someone after a while. There had to be someone, right?

Kind of. When he was in his mid-fifties, he did have a woman for a short while. Beats never. I’m damn glad he managed to, at least for a short time, rise above the vomit-worthy endemic cruelty that people, generally cowardly in action but ballsy in word, frolic within, and find a woman who was kinder than your usual human.

He had a really rough drinking problem, like howl at the moon rough. Luckily (at least in this respect), he didn’t have an ounce of violence in him. The cops knew him as the harmless town drunk. My grampa Paul (step) left them both pretty comfortable, so they lived in a really nice neighborhood. Dana had it pretty comfortable, and that’s good, because he couldn’t do much in the way of working. My Uncle Dana had trouble following conversations, and a slew of other issues I’d as soon not talk about.

Now, I was young, dumb, and full of firey cum, and I kind of blew him off a lot. He was 18 years older than I was then, and since I was working (occasionally) or hustling (usually), I think I viewed him as an overgrown kid. And I’d feel bad on the back of that because I knew none of it was his fault. He didn’t ask to be born with FAS.

When I was a child, I loved him. I used to look at the basement door and wonder where he was. He might have been 22 at the time I’m talking about. He worked at that time, but he also liked to drink, so Grampa Paul didn’t want him around us much. But I’d catch him in the morning, and he’d show me how to draw Dick Tracy characters. Shit. I haven’t even thought about that in years, and here I am thinking about the guy that got me drawing. He drew a Faucet Nose and a Hatchet Face and a bunch of other characters like that. Usually, this would be around sun-up when he got home from work. Shortly after everyone else woke up, he’d retire, and I wouldn’t see him again until the next morning. If that.

Most of the time I spent with him was pretty good. We used to have a huge house in Elgin, IL, and everyone worked except for Gramma and Dana. It was like a strange cross between The Waltons and The Addams Family. Damn thing was haunted, too, but that’s in another blog. John Bruni came over one night for a grand carousal. Shitloads of booze were in order. I was actually, at the time, there on vacation. I said we all lived and worked there. It’s true, but that happened about a year and half after this, when I moved in there with my wife.

My Uncle wasn’t, either at this time or later, allowed to drink thanks to the low-level lycanthropy, so we waited until he went to bed to start drinking. Or so we thought. We drank, we enjoyed it, we talked of the days of our yore, and it was a swell time. I hadn’t seen the bastage in about three years, maybe more. As I recall, while we were mid-reminisce, a fart blew from the landing at the top of the stairs.

“Dude,” I said, going for the Usual Suspects.

“I didn’t do that,” Paul (as I call him) said.

“Uh, huh, my nuts, man…wait. Shit.”

Dana had taken it upon himself to sit sentry at the top of the stairs and watch us drink, which we weren’t really supposed to be doing. Both of us were pretty deep in our alcoholic cups by then, though, so us not drinking was out of the question, whereas hiding drinking was perfectly feasible. I crept to the foot of the stairs, where I had the advantage on the landing and waited. I listened, and sure enough…breathing.

“Ay,” I said. “What are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything,” Dana said.

“Don’t be looking down here, man.”

Long story short, he wanted a snort. For obvious reasons, I…gave him a little. He acted right, and the whole thing wound up funny. Drinking alone wasn’t the reason they lived in the Elgin House, though. They lived there because one time, when my Uncle was out with some friends, two things happened, and my mother didn’t want them to happen ever again.

1.     A cab driver my grandmother was dating almost beat her to death. An empty bottle was used. It was fucking horrible. My mother found her, and I don’t think she’s ever really gotten over it. Justice was served upon the cunt who did it.

2.     The one time my Uncle did try to have roommates, they picked on him, using him for sport, until one night, they decided to throw him out in the winter cold, throw his clothes out the window, and pour water on everything, including him.

Why? Because they were swine. As I understand it, he didn’t want to buy them any more drugs, and that was their reaction.

I liked having him around most of the time. Like I said, we watched a lot of movies together when he was around, and a lot of Twilight Zone, some Andy Griffith, stuff like that. We watched Rio Bravo and Pale Rider. He did have a great deal of trouble following conversations, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t laugh a lot. The last time I saw him was three years ago, coinciding with my quitting dope, and I remember us standing in the cold garage on Christmas, and he was telling me things about the nursing home in Kankakee where he lived. The place definitely had issues, still, all things considered, he seemed to be having an okay time. He had a good sponsor. By his account, it wasn’t so bad in there.

Last year, some asshole stole his Wisconsin Cheeseman spread, which pissed everyone slap the fuck off. Other than that…I think he got to spend a lot of the last of his days happy enough. I want to think that. But I don’t know. On the phone, he wouldn’t say much of what was wrong, he usually just wanted to talk about his trips to the store, and often enough, it seemed like he had little inclination to talk because he was busy getting ready to go somewhere. He had a lot of medical appointments, and it’s fair to say he made a hobby out of those. He liked to occupy himself with keeping numerous appointment calendars up to date, and with people, their numbers, employment, things of that nature. If he’d not had FAS, I think he’d have made a great accountant or business secretary.

In that cold garage, kicking junk, anyone would call me a useless fuck, I told him I was sorry I hadn’t amounted to much, and that I wished I had, so he wouldn’t have to live there, which is about the dumbest fuckin’ thing you might say to someone like him. Back then, my fried brain didn’t know it. I’m glad I told him, and I also told him I loved him. He got the last part but had no fucking idea what the heck I was talking about on the first count. As in it didn’t register and I knew it wouldn’t so much as not, which is maybe why I said it, and I was happy enough when he said, “I love you too, Rob. You don’t have to worry about anything. I’m fine.”

Then we had Christmas Dinner. He was there for about a week. He spent whatever time he could watching MeTV with Bob. I was trying to fucking figure out my fried fucking psyche so I’d stop hallucinating. Ha. That was a great time. I played them off like they weren’t happening while my body reconfigured. I guess most folks who’ve done a lot of LSD have experience with that. It sure helped me.

He ate his dinner, he had trouble hearing, we had to yell for him to hear. He mumbled, his brain and words…they had their issues meeting each other in the middle. And I can’t goddamn think about it anymore. If I think too hard about what a raw deal he got this life, my eyes are going to shoot lasers. We just found out today that some dirtbag stole his wallet, Kindle, and other items once it was common knowledge around the home that he’d passed. Yeah, that’s a raw deal for sure, and those two words could describe his whole life. But he never knew it, we all still loved him, we had years of dinners, years of laughs, struggles for sure…fuck. We loved him, and he knew it, and sometimes that’s all you get.

He was 66 years old. 

Good journey, Dana. You're in the good place now. At least I say so. We miss you.