The Passing of an Age
Nov. 22nd, 2019 05:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhysianaI found out at the beginning of the week that my uncle had died the previous Sunday, but we didn't know because my parents had been out of town and their address was the only contact info the person had to let our side of the family know. I had actually just been thinking about him, and how long it had been since I talked to him, because he and my aunt always come to mind whenever fandom topics come up, particularly Tolkien and D&D.
They met, you see, because they had the same LotR calendar hanging in their respective cubicles at the insurance company where they both worked. A coworker noticed when my aunt put hers up and said, "Oh, there's a guy on the actuary floor who has the same thing!" and introduced them. In true nerd fashion, the man who would become my uncle then asked my aunt if she would like to play this game he'd helped beta test called Dungeons & Dragons, and decided to propose because "she was the only woman I'd ever met who would go into a dungeon with me." (My grandmother, definitely not a nerd: "???? I never know what that man is talking about.") Their D&D group continued for decades, leading to my aunt having a long-term in-game second husband (also much to my grandmother's consternation), and many family holiday gatherings at which they retold the party's latest adventures, sometimes with illustrations by the artistic teen who was part of the group and spent each session drawing scenes that caught their fancy. The one I remember best was the duck stabbing a giant in the toe. (Other topics my largely silent uncle would willingly discuss at length if you could get him started: opera and book series plots.)
They were low-key my role models all my life, even when I didn't really know why I identified with them so much. They lived in Chicago, far away from our hometown, where my grandparents and all three of my aunt's brothers still lived, and where I got the distinct impression my aunt moved specifically so she could be herself. They lived in a townhouse with their three cats, all their books, lots of fantasy figurines, and no children. When I first visited them at 11, it was a revelation that adults could live like that. My aunt took me to my first Renaissance fair on that trip as well.
They gave me books every Christmas. So much of the new fantasy and science fiction I read as a kid was because one of the first books of a series was in a box from them. They got me into the Wheel of Time, too, just because I saw them reading those books and became insatiably curious. (I'll never get to ask what they think about the TV adaptation now.) The introduced me to Forever Knight
My aunt died of cancer back in... 2006? 2007? Before I got married, for sure. After she died, my uncle became increasingly reclusive, and never would have initiated a phone call even before that, so I think the last time I talked to him was probably right after my grandfather died and I said we should call and let him know. I'm sad that I didn't really get into fandom before that, so I could have talked to them about it. I suspect they knew a lot more about old-school fandom activities than they ever bothered to talk about during their once-a-year visits. Their found family of friends in Chicago was clearly strong, as it was one of those friends who oversaw getting my uncle moved to a nursing home after his health declined too severely to deal with a multi-story townhouse anymore, and she's now the one dealing with sorting through his remaining possessions.
He was 77 and the longest-lived member of his immediate family. I wish I could have talked to him one last time.
They met, you see, because they had the same LotR calendar hanging in their respective cubicles at the insurance company where they both worked. A coworker noticed when my aunt put hers up and said, "Oh, there's a guy on the actuary floor who has the same thing!" and introduced them. In true nerd fashion, the man who would become my uncle then asked my aunt if she would like to play this game he'd helped beta test called Dungeons & Dragons, and decided to propose because "she was the only woman I'd ever met who would go into a dungeon with me." (My grandmother, definitely not a nerd: "???? I never know what that man is talking about.") Their D&D group continued for decades, leading to my aunt having a long-term in-game second husband (also much to my grandmother's consternation), and many family holiday gatherings at which they retold the party's latest adventures, sometimes with illustrations by the artistic teen who was part of the group and spent each session drawing scenes that caught their fancy. The one I remember best was the duck stabbing a giant in the toe. (Other topics my largely silent uncle would willingly discuss at length if you could get him started: opera and book series plots.)
They were low-key my role models all my life, even when I didn't really know why I identified with them so much. They lived in Chicago, far away from our hometown, where my grandparents and all three of my aunt's brothers still lived, and where I got the distinct impression my aunt moved specifically so she could be herself. They lived in a townhouse with their three cats, all their books, lots of fantasy figurines, and no children. When I first visited them at 11, it was a revelation that adults could live like that. My aunt took me to my first Renaissance fair on that trip as well.
They gave me books every Christmas. So much of the new fantasy and science fiction I read as a kid was because one of the first books of a series was in a box from them. They got me into the Wheel of Time, too, just because I saw them reading those books and became insatiably curious. (I'll never get to ask what they think about the TV adaptation now.) The introduced me to Forever Knight
My aunt died of cancer back in... 2006? 2007? Before I got married, for sure. After she died, my uncle became increasingly reclusive, and never would have initiated a phone call even before that, so I think the last time I talked to him was probably right after my grandfather died and I said we should call and let him know. I'm sad that I didn't really get into fandom before that, so I could have talked to them about it. I suspect they knew a lot more about old-school fandom activities than they ever bothered to talk about during their once-a-year visits. Their found family of friends in Chicago was clearly strong, as it was one of those friends who oversaw getting my uncle moved to a nursing home after his health declined too severely to deal with a multi-story townhouse anymore, and she's now the one dealing with sorting through his remaining possessions.
He was 77 and the longest-lived member of his immediate family. I wish I could have talked to him one last time.
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Date: 2019-11-23 02:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-11-23 04:49 pm (UTC)