This afternoon my cousin sent an e-mail to inform me his father, my Uncle Ed, is dead. He would have been 79 years old this New Year’s Eve. He’s been in a nursing home for many years; he died of complications of  Alzheimer’s.

It is a funny set of emotions that arise when you hear of a death long expected. There is a mixture of sadness and relief: after years of being  mentally ‘gone’, he is now physically gone as well.

Nevertheless, even though it was a matter of time – and it went on much longer than expected – there is mostly a sense of sadness and loss.

It was Uncle Ed who gave me my favorite nickname, “Iron Mike”. As a young boy who not at all confident in his masculinity (or even himself) I was thrilled by this superhero-like title. It gave me confidence. I thought he must see something in me that I couldn’t; strength like iron. In his honor, I have long worn a “Ring of power” made of hematite. I was wearing it when I received the e-mail.

31 December was Uncle’s birthday. Every New Year’s Eve I would call him, and the routine was always the same:

“Uncle Ed, this is Mike” 

Then he’d pretend not to remember me.

“Who?” 

“Your nephew, Mike, Iron Mike”
“Well Iron Mike, how are you?”

In person he would always greet me with a handshake, give me a pained Jack Benny look, and say “Hello, I’m Ed, your Uncle Ed” as if we had not met before.

This routine became gruesomely prophetic. Later when his dementia developed these promptings became reality.

For the past five years or more, I ceased calling him on his birthday, for he could not speak let alone recognize whom is calling or why.  In a sense he ‘died’ years ago.

My grandfather, his father, died of in his late 50s of a heart attack. In response, Uncle Ed became a health nut and exercised regularly. This prudent living allowed him to surpass Grandfather’s age way into his 70s – only to develop Alzheimer’s.  It makes me wonder if austere living was worth having those extra ten years, memory gone and in a nursing home.

But tonight I focus on the gift he gave me; the strength of iron.

Magnetic-Hematite-Ring

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