Episode 101 - Uncle Barry

I have my Uncle Barry to thank for introducing my father to my mother.  He was a Marine stationed at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and one day, after making hamburgers for dinner, he decided to toss the grease outside but forgot about the screen door in the process.  The result?  He got splattered with boiling grease and had to go to the infirmary where he was attended to by a Navy corpsman, my dad.  My uncle was newly married, and his wife had a sister, Spring, my mother.  The two met and were soon married – too soon, thought many – and just as quickly, I came along.  It was 1974.  In less than ten years, my dad would be gone.  Passed away.  Deceased.  It had been his heart.  Had the affliction come just a few years later, medical science would have been able to help. Losing my father months shy of my tenth birthday left an indelible mark on me.  The truth be told, the loss shaped me in ways I am still discovering.  The permanence of death is unyielding.  A person can’t get around it.  Can’t escape how it looms over us all.  It was a lot to process for a kid.  Suffering was all around me: my brothers and sisters, my mother, my grandparents, aunt, and uncle. He was my dad, but he was also a husband and brother, friend and son.  I think back on that time now as a husband and father and shudder at how the loss of my dad was also the loss of a husband, the loss of a brother, the loss of a child.  Death is an enemy for a reason.  He who wields the scythe is indiscriminate and cruel. I was blessed to have many loving adults in my life.  In their own way, they walked with me through that dark tunnel.  Some offered words.  Others just listened.  Uncle Barry took me fishing, and in doing so, taught me how to disconnect from one reality and connect to another.  The language of trout streams is melodic, peaceful.  It was both a retreat and a way to plug into something higher.  A gift.  A beautiful respite even when it rained and the water grew muddy. Here is a poem I wrote.  I hope it lands well. Uncle Barry Uncle Barry understood trout in a way that was silent and sure: “They hittin’ on salted minnows today?” I’d ask as I’d ease into the Brokenstraw to get a sense of the current. “Mm hm,” he’d reply, and that was all; I’d soon hear the squeal of his line as he cast upstream, and I’d watch him guide the blue-green line downstream like a conductor before an unseen orchestra.  In wisps of cigarette smoke, Uncle Barry would make his way downstream, triangulating, strategizing, and thinking about nothing all at once, and between bait I would follow; nudged by the steady flow of water, caught in the silent and sure wonder of river and man and things unseen, tugged by the goodness of a man who showed me how to fish for trout as my own father once began before he left to die -- “Make sure your split shot’s two foot up from your bait, and try the riffles.  It’s time they’re hittin’,”  he’d yell back, and because I too wanted the symphony of a catch, I would.