Sulphur River Vernal Equinox 1999 [antikvár]

TRIBUTARIES I walk slowly through the winding hospitál corridors, not sure of exactlywhat I will find but knowing that it is not going to be good. I find his room and enter, and there he is, in the bed, deep in morphine sleep, emaciated, looking more like his father than himself, losing his battle with cancer. My Uncle Gene. My aunt is there, too, sitting with him, waiting out the inevitable by his síde. We talk-mostly about anything except him, there not being much left to say. More family comes by and somé friends. No one wants to see him this way. No one knows what to say. He never wakes up, even when the nurses come to try to feed him. A few weeks on the edge and then he is gone. It's a blessing, I suppose that he slept through the end, that we have something like morphine to keep the pain away, but I would have liked to have spoken with him once more. I would have liked to have told him that he was my favorité uncle. I do so now. My Uncle Gene was a strong man, the kind of man who does for himself what needs to be done, what he wants to do, come what may. For example, when he got out of the Navy, he met and decided he wanted to marry my aunt, and did. Then he brought her halfway across the country on the back of a motorcycle, despite what must have been very adamant protests from his new mother-in-law, Miss Ágnes, my grandmother and a formidable person in her own right. He always looked to tomorrow and the tasks waiting there for him. He never talked about his experiences in World War II, although he was stationed at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. One can imagine that he had seen plenty to speak of had he been so inclined. I never heard him complain. Not once. It's always hard seeing someone like that suffer, the tragedy of watching him waste away. But that is not how he will be remembered. For most of us, I suppose, he will be remembered tinkering around in his shop, dressed in the khaki pants and shirt he always wore, leaning over somé engine, a wrench in one hand, a cigarette in the other, an inch or two of ash hanging off the end, his glasses halfway down his nose. Or standing beside his house, surveying his garden or looking