Uncle 'J'

Recently someone asked me a question, “When you were young, who did you admire the most?”  Perhaps I could have answered with one of several people, but I quickly replied, “My uncle J.”  As a boy then as a man I must admit that he was a character.  But, I admired him.

‘J’ was not educated, and very poor, but he seemed to me to posses important qualities, and he liked to have fun.  Perhaps it was because he served in WWII and saw and did what no man should have to see or do.  He came home with pure white hair although he was in his early twenties.  He was shot by a machine gun and so severely injured that he had to pick up his intestines and walk a quarter mile to an aid station.  He survived the war, but not the injury.  It would plague him all his life.

‘J’ would tell you that you couldn’t kill him because he had already been dead.  That’s the way he lived his life.  He took the little things in life as pleasures, and shared joy where he found it.
I could go on and on with stories about him, but everyone has at least one book in their life story.  And, this is not a place to write a book.

The lessons he showed me, not what he told me, were important, and I remember.

Don’t be afraid and treat everyone fairly.

PMO
©2018