In Bloom, wisteria blooming in the mid-April spring before
the hard freeze, photos © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
My Uncle Bear died yesterday. I was at my daughter’s horse show when I got the call from Mom. Dad was crying too much to tell me himself.
I wonder what it’s like to lose a younger sibling. I have no younger sisters or brothers myself, so I will never know that feeling. I imagine it to be different — very different — from losing parents or even an older sister. I imagine it’s like a giant swoosh of air, like a wind tunnel, where you experience everything that brother meant to you. Your childhood, your parents, your relationship to everyone else in the family.
My Uncle Onofre, which is Uncle Bear’s real name, was the reckless one — the one who acted on impulse, made friends easily, never took life too seriously. From Dad’s memoirs, he wrote this about his little brother:
He was a jolly kid who made friends with practically the entire adult population in the neighborhood. He was always helping some neighbor with his fields, or his animals, or with house chores. People all around were always talking about what a hard worker he was and they were always after him to come help them. He was always willing.
The strange thing about Onofre’s industriousness and generosity was that around our own home we had trouble getting him to do anything. My mother would say about him that he was “el candil de la calle, obscuridad de su casa,” which translated says, “the light of the street but darkness in his house.” But people loved him. He was always whistling. He loved to whistle “Cielito Lindo” so much that some of the boys nicknamed him “Cielito” and it stuck. Years later, people from Costilla who had known him would ask, “Whatever happened to your brother, Cielito?”
Cielito, Uncle Bear, Uncle Onofre. He went on to raise a large family. All his sons served in the military. Uncle Bear lived hard, smoked like mad, got Diabetes — the “silent killer” among Chicanos. Dad always says, given Uncle Onofre’s happy, carefree outlook on life, he should have outlived all the rest of them. But Onofre believed in living life to the fullest, and for him that meant not worrying about how long a life you lived, just that it was lived joyously.
Dad called his little brother about ten days before he died. Onofre could still talk on the phone.
“Hi, Cielito,” Dad said to Onofre.
“Hi, Conde,” Onofre said back.
“Cielito” means “little sky” or in a religious sense, “little heaven.” It captured in its wide blue umbrella all that was Dad’s little brother.
“Conde” stood for “Condemnado” — condemned one. Like the way you might call a beautiful sister “fea” (ugly) or a genius brother “tonto” (stupid), Uncle Onofre called my devout father, “condemned one.”
Tomorrow morning I’ll drive my mom and dad through Dad’s ancestral homelands of Taos and Costilla, to southern Colorado. We’ll attend rosary and services on Wednesday morning, visit all afternoon with cousins and other family we haven’t seen for years. We’ll laugh and cry. We might even sing. Just in his honor.
Until then, I’d like to share these three poems that remind me of my light-hearted, hugable Uncle Bear.
Bearhug
by Michael Ondaatje, from The Cinnamon Peeler
Griffin calls to come and kiss him goodnight
I yell ok. Finish something I’m doing,
then something else, walk slowly round
the corner to my son’s room.
He is standing arms outstretched
waiting for a bearhug. Grinning.
Why do I give my emotion an animal’s name,
give it that dark squeeze of death?
This is the hug which collects
all his small bones and his warm neck against me.
The thin tough body under the pyjamas
locks to me like a magnet of blood.
How long was he standing there
like that, before I came?
Bear
by Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early
It’s not my track,
I say, seeing
the ball of the foot and the wide heel
and the naily, untrimmed
toes. And I say again,
for emphasis,
to no one but myself, since no one is
with me. This is
not my track, and this is an extremely
large foot, I wonder
how large a body must be to make
such a track, I am beginning to make
bad jokes. I have read probably
a hundred narratives where someone saw
just what I am seeing. Various things
happened next. A fairly long list, I won’t
go into it. But not one of them told
what happened next–I mean, before whatever happens–
how the distances light up, how the clouds
are the most lovely shapes you have ever seen, how
the wild flowers at your feet begin distilling a fragrance
different, and sweeter than any you ever stood upon before–how
every leaf on the whole mountain is aflutter.
Clouds
by Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early
All afternoon, Sir,
your ambassadors have been turning
into lakes and rivers.
At first they were just clouds, like any other.
Then they swelled and swirled; then they hung very still;
then they broke open. This is, I suppose,
just one of the common miracles,
a transformation, not a vision,
not an answer, not a proof, but I put it
there, close against my heart, where the need is, and it serves
the purpose. I go on, soaked through, my hair
slicked back;
like corn, or wheat, shining and useful.
Yellow Bird, possibly a Kingbird that’s been hanging around the
past few days, photo © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
-Related to post, Practice: Growing Older – 20min
What a lovely tribute to your Uncle Bear…
And how wonderful to create something for your Dad to read and find comfort in…without having to share a spoken word.
yb, Have both an open mind and open heart…have belief in something that you cannot see…and that may make no logical sense to you…in this world…
…and tell your Papa to watch for dimes
😉 H
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beautiful words, nice tribute to both…
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I’m sorry about your uncle’s passing, ybonesy.
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My deepest heartfelt thoughts are with you and your family.
Lovely tribute & poems. D
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ybonesy, beautiful. Your words, the poems, the photographs. And I loved that you included part of your father’s memoir about his brother.
I will be thinking of you on your drive to Taos and Costilla, through your father’s ancestral homelands. And then, on to Colorado. Colorado seems so far away from the Midwest. But for you, it’s neighboring land.
You know how you describe losing a younger sibling? Sometimes that’s how I imagine the moment of death to be like, something else we’ll never know until that moment.
I imagine it’s like a giant swoosh of air, like a wind tunnel, where you experience everything that brother meant to you. Your childhood, your parents, your relationship to everyone else in the family.
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This is a beautiful post, thanks for the poetry and the poignant memoir from your dad. “Uncle Bear” is a tough loss. I also got the message from the wisteria – ours bloomed gorgeously, then turned to brown paper overnight. It happens. Enjoy the trip to the north, through the grand cielito. Vaya con Dios.
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The photo of the wysteria blossom took my breath away!
I’m sorry to hear about your Uncle Cielito Bear. Your stories about him are so poignant and rich, as are your father’s words. Your grandomther too spoke with poetry.
Thanks for sharing this heartfelt tribute.
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ybonesy – what a lovely way to remember your uncle Onofre. The appropriate poems you chose for your Dad express the wide open heart of the sky and the gathering strength of a bear, you celebrate in your thoughts of your uncle Cielito/Onofre/Bear. Apropos also is the wisteria struggling to bloom before the hard frost. Life is like that, also, people blossom too right before they die. When my dad was struck down by the stroke which killed him, he was in the process of planting a young blooming apple tree in his back yard. it was in April also. Now that our own apple tree is pushing forth blooms i remember him. It’s as if he is sending a message i have yet to be able to decipher. This is a yearly gift. I hope the celebration of your uncle’s life holds you living ones all together in love and remembrance. G
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Beautiful, beautiful tribute to your Uncle Onofre.
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all cliches aside, i offer my deepest sympathies on the death of your uncle. having just lost my grandfather, i know well the empty ache that is left behind, and the unsettling sense of confusion and wonderment that death imposes on the living.
my father’s only sibling, his younger sister, was murdered when i was five years old; i can tell you that it was not easy for my father, nor was it for any of us– though i am certain you need no assurance of that. what i can also tell you, though, is that we, the people left behind, find a way to trudge on, to ‘keep on truckin’, often because there is no other choice but to do so. life doesn’t stop for death, it only halts time in the moment that it happens.
i’ve often honoured my aunt’s untimely demise by writing about her, sometimes for high school assignments, sometimes for college essays or debates, and always, always, for myself. she is very much alive within the ink and pencil worlds i create for her.
i wish you and your family well.
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Beautiful tribute. Perhaps we could all live something from Uncle Bear? Live life to the fullest, and help our fellow beings.
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Thank you, everyone, for your wishes and comments. I so appreciate them and the stories some of you shared.
Scaramastra, how sad that his younger sister was murdered. The violence must have been almost unbearable for your father and his parents to fathom. I wonder if you have shared your writings about her with him and if so, has that helped him?
G., that is almost a gift, that he died at that moment and now you have such a beautiful yearly way to remember him. I know of deaths that occur around certain holidays, which makes the holidays so much harder, but in your case, it brings a poignancy to each spring.
Heather, I didn’t see this before the services and so didn’t have a chance to tell my dad to watch for dimes. I’m trying to remember now when I saw them, because it does seem I saw them. Well, three today. I found one unexpectedly in an envelope where I had my driver’s license. Then two stuck into a magazine, I noticed just a bit ago. Hmmm…
The service was beautiful. The morning was gorgeous. A red brick church, very big and stately, on a dead-end road with an old railroad steel overpass just up above. Lots of old trees lined the street. There was music, Spanish, played by a man with a guitar. He had jet-black hair with a thin ponytail to the middle of his back, a mustache. There was a 21-gun salute — Uncle Bear served in WWII — and the playing of Taps on bugle. Oh how we all sobbed then. He was a good man.
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[…] him slip away like that. He’s already a little viejo. Don’t let him lose his memory. Onofre died in spring. The wisteria froze, big grape clusters whithered brown overnight. Don’t let Dad become […]
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