It is never easy to unpack boxes after a major move.
It is unsettling to embrace the sentiment attached to each object. I found an ordinary light bulb in a box the
other day. It reminded me of Uncle Clarence and the reverie began.
For the Thanksgiving holiday of my tenth year we all
went to Grandma’s for the weekend. Dad
just had to go hunting there in California. Actually, there weren't
enough beds to go around. My mother was sleeping with my two sisters in a double
and who knows where the other relatives would nap. After much family discussion, it was determined that
I would spend the night in Uncle Clarence's bed, since I was the smallest.
Uncle Clarence’s bed was actually a cot. In fact, it
was an army cot. Uncle had rigged it up with a box- shaped tarp
surrounding the pillow to protect him from drafts. Compared to our old
farmhouse, I never felt any drafts at Grandma’s house.
Hanging down from this canvas tent was a single light
bulb. Uncle Clarence read at night. His entire bookshelf was filled with
medical books. And what's more, he had memorized most of them. As a self-
educated physician, he was the go-to person for any ache, pain or general
malaise. The neighbors came over regularly for his advice. He was good at
diagnosing their complaints, often mentioning the page of which text the
information could be found on. Later, their doctors confirmed what he knew all
along.
Uncle Clarence became interested in medicine when he
was in the Army, I guess he'd seen quite a need for it there. In fact, his
service made such an impression on him, that he kept his World War I uniform
hanging on the back of his bedroom door, just in case he'd be called into
action again. Occasionally, he'd dust it off a bit, try on the hat, pose for
pictures.
Maybe it was his knowledge of the human body that led
to his appreciation of the female sex. Not females in general, of course. There
was only one that stood out from all the rest who required his ultimate
devotion. Marilyn Monroe. Pictures of her surrounded the doorway of his room.
He had seen every movie of hers about twenty times. Along with the
autographed shots, there were handwritten letters from her. After all, he was the only one who truly
understood her. It went without question that Uncle Clarence remained a
bachelor. To marry anyone else would
have amounted to adultery.
Clarence kept
his life simple. He worked in a box factory, topped at the tavern on the way
home for a beer, and brought home tiny bags of bar pretzels for us. Uncle C. took
care of Grandma. He religiously stuck to a diet of dried bread and raw carrots
for himself, long before such things became popular in California. Uncle was
always so very kind to me. I was the only one in the family with blonde hair,
and you know who that made him recall.
It was with
some guilt that I more or less betrayed him. The unforgivable happened ten
years later in Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. My aunt and I went to
visit a relative who was being treated in the Psychiatric Unit for Depression.
A Social Worker called us into her office to get a little family background.
She wanted to know if anyone else in the family suffered from Mental Illness.
After giving it some thought, I said, "Well, there was Uncle Clarence..............". My aunt was aghast and never forgave me.
To the
family, Clarence was just eccentric.
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