Thankful Day Eleven - Uncle Lawrence

My grandmother had two brothers and three sisters. They all played a big role in my childhood, except for one. Her oldest brother, Ellery, was killed in a car accident when my mother was a little girl. My grandmother never got over it. She missed him every day for the rest of her life. So in a way, he did play a role in my life, in that I learned about missing someone, that much, after they’re gone. There was sadness, but there was joy too. And now, today, right this minute, it is how I feel when I think of her.

Her other brother, Lawrence, was younger than my grandmother. What I remember about him, from a little girl’s perspective, was that he walked funny, and spoke funny. He was in the war, my grandmother explained. And then she went on to tell me what he’d been like before the war.

He married a girl from England when World War II ended, and my grandfather and something to do with paying her way here and they never paid him back . . . something that caused a rift. From then, his wife never got along with my grandmother, so family gatherings were strained when they were both there. Thus, out of all her siblings, he was the one I knew the least.

They had three children, Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Kathleen. The oldest was my mother’s age. I knew them, I suppose, but not as well as I knew other cousins.

When my grandmother died, Uncle Lawrence came to the funeral home. I remember being in a room away from the throng of mourners, needing a break from it all. He found me off on my own and we sat and talked. It was hard for him to talk, whatever his injury had been during the war, had the same result as if he had a stroke. But he persevered and I listened. Each sentence seemed to take an eternity, but I knew what he was working so hard to tell me, was important. He told me about my grandmother that day. She was always his favorite, he told me. The one he loved the best. We sat long enough, that people came looking for me, worried about me. I remember Uncle Lawrence saying, "Leave us be."

I remember so little of him, compared to the rest of my aunts and uncles, but I’'ll never forget his kindness that day, the love he showed for me and for his sister. When he came back from the war, he couldn’t ever work again. He told me how my grandmother would come when Aunt Kathleen was at work, and my grandfather was too, and he and his sister would play cards. It wasn’t a story my grandmother ever told me. But I carry the image in my mind to this day . . . of the two of them sitting and playing cards.

So today, Veterans Day, I am thankful for Uncle Lawrence, and for the sacrifices he made for the love of our country.