I should have written all this sooner. At the time I felt utterly adrift. For my entire life the one thing that could be counted on was an unlocked door in Delanco and a barrage of words whenever Grammy realized you were there. I’ve seen both of my childhood homes sold. I’ve even seen my Dad move away from my home town after my Mother died. Life seemed fleeting and unanchored but always there was the absolute permanence of Grammy.

Now she’s gone. And for a moment I started to float away. But life is a circle, and an anchor appeared to root me again. I hate people that make death all about themselves. I’ll give myself a good kick in the pants later on.

I’m three for four on family eulogies. We’re so good at this funereal thing, the undertaker comes over to drink beer while we collectively make the arrangements. The Olympic year curse has struck again (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010). We soldier on as a family, happy to be together in sadness and in celebration, secure in the thought I had when Grandpop died:

If his only monument is our large, loud, happily scrapping family it’s still the best monument to any person I can think of.

No, no. Just a little bandage is all I’ll be needin’ And a few minutes off my feet. Me brogans are killin’ me. — Buster Kilrain, “Gettysburg”

I dunno if a very real descendant of Protestant Huguenots would appreciate being honored with the words of a fictional Irish Catholic soldier but it’s the first thing that came to mind when I heard the news:

Another one of the finest human beings on this Earth is gone. Killed by cancer. Taken, I suppose, by God for his own inscrutable reasons.

This is getting ridiculous. There better be one hell of a party going on in Heaven because all the good people seem to be already there.

Jed X. Hastings was the first friend I made in Civil War reenacting. I stood by him on a dusk-bathed hillside in Waynesboro nervous as hell in my first “battle” while a Coehorn mortar shook the very ground beside us and howling secessionists swept out of the gathering darkness towards us.

He was family. We were Hastings – militant Yankees who always wore blue and stayed up late just so we could participate in a TP raid on General Lee’s tent. I’ve run out of fingers to count the laughs. There were the jello shots to celebrate Wellys Hasting’s name. The year of “LUMPS!” WEEZIL’s initiation. The night of Gretchen’s leak. The 23d Fiji at Little Round Top. Jed and Doc and family standing in the boiling heat of my graduation day in full woolen kit.

I lose track of the number of times I drank “Very Northern Comfort” with the man, or shared a case of American Light pounders, or those ginormous 22 oz. bottles of Yuengling Lager you can only get near the Mother’s Teat in coal country. I’ve no hope of numbering the jokes, the memories, the brotherhood, the affection, the love.

That’s family. Brothers from another Mother. And my mother is dead.

And so is my brother.

And all I can do is remember him and pray he’s in good hands, welcomed by those who have gone before him to a richly deserved reward.

Requiescat in pace.

Well Lawrence, he died. Yeah. He died this morning ‘fore I got there. Couple of the fellas, they was with him. He said to tell you goodbye. And that he was sorry.

I tell you Lawrence, I sure was fond of that man. — Thomas Chamberlin, “Gettysburg”

Dad grew up in household of six: Mom, Dad, four kids. There are only three left now.

Mom grew up in a household of eight: Mom, Dad, six kids. There are only five left now.

My Uncle Ed was a man of exquisite taste: he liked Pig and Rat, sang “Puff, the Magic Dragon” better than Peter, Paul and Mary, and opined at length on the greatness of Predator.

He opined at length on many things. He left me a ten-minute voicemail on my birthday. He talked for two hours to my brother on his. He kept me entertained for an hour at Thanksgiving with stories of the soccer playing days of his youth.

He was a man of enormous strength. He used to be able to vault himself out of his wheelchair and into the driver’s seat of his old station wagon, then disassemble his wheelchair and toss it into the back seat of the car. And he could do this as many times a day as was required.

He was a man of enduring faith. His unfinished doctoral thesis was on the subject of relativism. He once told me a quote, which I misquote, and which seems to be the foundation for his thesis, “One day science will break through the final wall and find that religion had been there all along.”

I have a friend with a Crazy Uncle Ed as well. Let us drink to Crazy Uncle Eds. They are such a large presence that they leave an awful gap when gone.