Goodbye Uncle John

My Uncle John died Friday November 17th.  I'm not really sure how to write about what I'm feeling right now.  John was not a perfect man, not in the slightest.  But he was a really good guy and I am going to miss him.  I was his first nephew, and he was really excited to be an Uncle.  I never got to know him nearly as well as I would have liked.  In my mind, he was always funny.  Genuinely funny, that was in part because he was able to get my dad laughing hard and could keep him laughing for a long time.

His sense of humor is honestly the thing I'm going to remember the most.  C.S. Lewis wrote that when a person dies we not only lose them, we also lose the parts of us and others that only that person was able to bring out.  And the part of my Dad that John was able to bring out is something that I am going to miss deeply.

Beyond being funny, there was nothing, absolutely nothing that Uncle John couldn't do.  Every time you thought you had found a job or something that he hadn't done, you would hear a new story about that one summer he spent doing some odd job that you wouldn't have imagined.  My personal favorite is when he worked planting dynamite at a quarry.  One time we were trying to figure out the best way to get rid of a stump on our place.  He suggested a pipe bomb essentially, and when we asked what happened to the pipe in that scenario he just matter of factly said, "Oh that's easy, shrapnel." 

Over the last few years, John was sick.  He did manage to still enjoy some moments in spite of that, but it was hard watching him disappear.  There are ways he has permanently impacted my life.  Before he died, he assured us that he was right with Christ and that we would see him again.  I look forward to that day, to seeing that ornery smile again and hearing him laugh once more.