Aunts Johanna, Mary and Katie in the driveway of our childhood home in Sedalia, Missouri. Year unknown.

Aren’t we loads of those we have lost? Take the word, loads. Every birthday card from Aunt Mary, the invalid next door, was signed, loads. I have been sending her loads ever since I learned to write my name. Here she is in the center of the picture before she became crippled unto bed. Despite her chronic pain, Aunt Mary was always up for a visitor.

When Uncle E.G. flew into town, everyone seemed to sit higher, Aunt Mary included. E.G. was the connoisseur of all living and in every language. He mastered not only the Romance languages: French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, but also some German and Russian. When I was a child, he taught me really in every language, convinced peut-etre with rising intonation would get me through any conversation.

E.G. on one of his many European adventures. Probably early 1980s.

E.G. happened into town just in time for the school talent show to teach the seven year olds, cousin Carol and me the song, Mack the Knife in German. Mere English was never good enough. So we sang, “Und der Haifisch, der het Zahne…,” and “Oh the shark has shiny teeth dear…,” unaware we were singing a murder ballad. Needless to say, we didn’t win the talent contest. Uncle E.G.’s fascination with Jack the Ripper perhaps influenced his choice of song, associating the London Macheath of the song with the Ripper.

His favorite chant was ‘do something, even if it’s wrong,’:  E.G., the Western man in love with doing, acting, traveling, learning, loving people and what would life be without their problems to solve? Then, I heard wrong and would imagine what wrong I might do and all the disastrous consequences, i.e. purgatory, hell or even the more earthily mundane disturbance of being caught, found out, and the terrible discomfort and embarrassment. Now, as E.G.’s ghost sits outside my window, reclining with his bald head hatted and his nose, plastered creamy white to avoid more skin cancers, I hear his emphasis: Do something, don’t worry about the right or wrong of it.

For E.G., every day was a champagne occasion.

Now, he’s sipping his mimosa under the trellis supported by muscular arms of wistaria, twisting and bursting blue buds like beads of perspiration. He raises his champagne flute to spring before closing his little ojitos for a long siesta.

E.G. has found a comfortable chair to dwell near me, his doing over but still giving directions to my doing, cheering us all onwards and upwards as he ends with Oscar Wilde: “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.”