It took more than a week for the family to rally after Uncle Phil died. Aunt Sue, who only my sister had ever met prior to today, needed time to arrange things. There was no end of life plan in place, no funeral home selected, no burial plot chosen. She'd been overwhelmed by both grief and everything there was to coordinate.
Toward the end of June, my father and I were talking about arranging a trip to Tacoma in the fall to visit Uncle Phil. Dad hadn't seen him in 42 years. Uncle Phil and my dad had exchanged emails in recent years but nothing more. Uncle Phil did not come home to Beaver Falls when Grandpa Bob died last October.
My sister had been fortunate enough to meet with both Uncle Phil and Aunt Sue in March, when she was in the area on one of her business trips. Uncle Phil and I never met until today.
He didn't have much to say. But over the course of the day, much was said about him. I knew him, his story at least, as being: a man who left home a long time ago never came back. I knew him as the "other" Boguszewski, the one who regularly beat me in Google searches for this last name of ours.
Over drinks, over food, his friends defined him, gave him characteristics: a history, a sense of humor, a work ethic, a taste in music. I saw photos from his days as a sax player, from when he first met Sue. I read clips in the knife industry magazines about his masterful skills as a knifemaker. His friends told me the two of us would have gotten along; we both had and shared peculiarities.
I can only wonder what someone similar to me was like. Only the people who'd met Uncle Phil have the perspective to compare. Would I know myself better to observe what other people see in me in someone else, as if I could step outside myself? When they tell me who he was, and that even without meeting, we were alike, what does that say about my nature? Perhaps Boguszewskis are born this way. Or perhaps my father acted as a conduit, picking up and passing on mannerisms and affectations from his older brother in his younger days, to me. Maybe my personality is the institutional memory of those who lived before me.