A Letter About Death From My Uncle

Another one of my uncles died yesterday. This is the third uncle to die in three months.

It was a hard medical ending for this uncle. It was quite possibly a harder one spiritually for him. I don’t know for sure, but I have my suspicions and they are founded upon an unexpected and extraordinary letter he wrote to me several months ago after the death of his younger brother, my uncle, from cancer.

It was only the second letter he had ever written me; the first one was 29 years ago when I was living in Turkey and teaching English. I had written him, then a Professor of Theology at a Catholic university, about my visiting various Christian holy sites in a Muslim country, and how seeing them on the ground confirmed my atheism. My atheism had begun about the time I was baptized at ten years of age and was only interrupted once for a brief time in high school.

He wrote me back that I was “naive” in my belief. I got a kick out of that. A Christian calling an atheist “naive.” I left it at that and we never discussed the matter again. I still think I’m probably the only member of his family besides his wife, my aunt, who read his PHD dissertation. It was about the intellectual and theological beliefs and practices of the Puritans in Holland, the sect kicked out of England. I recall us talking about it decades ago and me offering a critique that after reading it, I knew everything about what the Puritans believed in exile, but nothing about how they lived. He said my critique was “Marxist” and dismissed it. I chuckled and left it alone. We stuck to sports after that.

This second and final letter was written by an obviously failing hand, meaning the mangled cursive and strange strays of the pen. But the content was totally coherent and direct.

The letter was a half page long.

My uncle told me I should use my ability as a writer to help him and others understand death. It was clear from his statements he made about death that he did not. He certainly was not going gently into that good night. He was doing exactly what Dylan Thomas commanded, in perhaps the most misguided poem ever written.

It was the first letter I had ever received asking me to write about a particular subject. I was honored by the request. My uncle wrote that I had a gift. It was never clear to me he ever read any of my books including the one he’s in, about the Portland Trail Blazers’ 1977 NBA championship run.

I have written about death many times, including chronicling my own personal extinction five years ago and stating in various pieces that I want to end my sentient life by jumping into Hart’s Cove on Cascade Head to expedite my return as rain and complete the true eternal cycle of all life on Earth—water. No hierarchy there except clouds.

Since receiving that letter, I have considered taking up my uncle’s specific request, but that raises an interesting issue: just who, exactly is my audience for such a piece of writing? We’re all going to die so perhaps, everyone? Or just those whose lifelong hierarchical beliefs about death and the hereafter may weaken near the end and sometimes collapse altogether? Or just an audience of one, me? And what of the death of other things besides human beings? Such as species, kindness, hopes, dreams and ideals? Or what about the dead faces of the homeless people I see and interact with every day? What about trying to write a poem in response to my uncle’s letter that attempted to redress the stupidity of Dylan Thomas’ poem about death? Or about how and why the subject of death enraged and mystified my uncle? Or something about how he donated his body to science, which truly surprised me when my mother, his sister, told me that?

There’s a lot to cover with death.

Or perhaps there is not. Perhaps I could start by examining the death of one person and what that person did with her life or did not do because of something in her life that inspired or killed her. I would not want to know that person well, or very much at all. I believe I would write better that way.