In Memoriam: My Dear Uncle Tommy

My uncle Tommy died yesterday after battles with two cancers. This piece is in his honor and for his wife, my aunt Mary Ann, his kids, my cousins Lori, Jeff and Kenny, and the extended family and friends who loved him. He was a kind man, a man of much love and faith, and I know we will all miss him.

The last time my partner Ann and I visited Tommy and Mary Ann at their home in Davidson, North Carolina, he drove Ann and me to a coffee shop to meet with a previous professor of mine. As he drove, he remembered driving to his first dates with Mary Ann. “On the way to meet her,” he told us, “I would get so excited and nervous that my palms would sweat and my heart would race. I would say aloud over and over, ‘I’m going to see Mary Ann! I’m going to see Mary Ann!’” As he recounted the memory, he tapped both hands on the steering wheel, excited just to remember it.

Usually the family storyteller, Mary Ann sat quietly in the passenger seat, watching him with a soft glint in her eye that had lasted through three kids, several cats and at least one dog, and fifty-four years of marriage. She smiled softly, a dimple creasing her left cheek. “Dear…” she said lovingly.

Mary Ann and Tommy called each other “dear” so much that one friend wondered aloud if they knew each others’ names.

In one of my favorite moments on another visit, Mary Ann was telling a story that seemed to veer wildly off topic. “Dear,” Tommy said, “the train has left the track.”

Ann and I say this to one another still, stretching the dear into two long syllables as we try to echo his line.

On that recent trip, Tommy was preparing for the Sunday school class he would be teaching on an Old Testament story. Animatedly, he told us that this story foretold the story of Christ, and was in fact a reference to Christ’s coming.

“Well,” I said to him, “Some people think that.” Tommy and I had different ideas about politics and religion. If I understand it right, he was a Biblical literalist and a social conservative (though he and Mary Ann were always loving towards my partner Ann and me.)

“No. I’m pretty sure it’s fact. Pretty much every scholar agrees,” he countered.  

“What about Jewish scholars?”

“Well,” he said, “You have a good point there.”

That’s how he was. Kind and humble. Love and family always came first with him. One day when I’m wise, maybe I’ll be as kind and humble and loving as he was.