My uncle’s extraordinary talent for painting came to him effortlessly. “When I brought that painting home and you saw it,” Tony recalls with a chuckle as he adjusts his oxygen tube, “you said right then, you wanted it.” It had momentarily slipped my wife’s mind that it was Tony who had painted the masterful reproduction of Winslow Homer’s The Herring Net that dominates our living room. In fact, the majority of the photos that keep him company are of people in boats with sunlit faces. There’s Josephine on the boat, fishing rod in hand, the late-arriving love of his life beaming her eternal smile. “That’s me, that kid on the right, half-hidden by the flag.” The next photos of him are in military clothes in Korea. He’s got the window, a view of distant Raritan Bay, and he’s got his wall of photos.Ī crowd is gathered in front of a Brooklyn tenement on the day the government declared the end of World War II. Except for my uncle, whose TV is never on. Tony’s roommate has his TV tuned to a game show that he’s not watching, like everyone on this floor. But, though physically diminished, he is mentally very much himself. Thus this hastily arranged trek to Staten Island. His stepdaughter, Emily, advised we come soon. Recently he’d suffered several days of hallucinations. I feel ashamed that this is only our second visit here, and that he’s not previously met my wife of five years, considering how much a few brief experiences I’d had with him when I was in my teens have meant to me. So the calls, which he always ends with, “I love you,” are short. He refuses to complain and his energy is limited. At age 87 he’s got diabetes, recently pneumonia, everything hurts. He’s not much of a talker so I seldom call. But today is only the third time I’ve seen my uncle in 10 years. Tony had always been drawn to the sea, to boats, and to fish. “My wife,” I say, and before I can add, “Patricia,” he points to a photo of her on the wall, on a boat, holding up a halibut. “Here’s a person I haven’t met,” he says as we fully materialize. As we file past the partition Tony takes in his visitors. What Uncle Tony had: An untrained eye for the beautiful and a willingness to share a little time near water.īut now he’s in a two-person room on the far side of the curtain. Sometimes, early planted seeds that will germinate decades later into a writer’s life are planted by sources neither formal nor literary. How my uncle’s generosity - and love of the sea - inspired me for a lifetime
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