small fries

If you can imagine it, imagine this: a woman writes you a letter and in it she says that her and her family will be moving to Canada in six months.  You don't really know this woman.  You are somehow related, since her husband is the youngest child of your youngest aunt, neither of whom you've met.  You being the oldest child of the oldest sibling, there's over thirty years between you and this woman.  She writes in her letter that they don't know anyone in Canada and is asking for your help - could you recommend a place to stay?  someone to call?  ...How would you know?  You've been living here for over twenty-five years.  You have a crazy idea and, as you look around your two-bedroom condo on the quiet side of the DVP, you decide to talk to your wife about it when she gets home from work.  You're retired, she's about to and you have a new home in Barrie that is going to be your retirement present to yourselves.  That night, after dinner, you pen a letter back to the woman and tell her your crazy idea: why not come and stay with us?

I have no idea what my Uncle Len was thinking when he extended that offer to my mom, my dad, me and my (still a baby) brother.  The only reason my mom had his address was because she had been polite enough to send Thank-You cards to everyone who so much as RSVP'd to their wedding.  As a result, she was in regular correspondence with my Uncle Len, whose distinctive "ruler-writing" made his letters so recognisable.  In his later years, that writing would be the only part of him that didn't give in to age.  He and dad were indeed first cousins, but had never so much as exchanged words on the telephone (not like we had a telephone to make this easy).  And when we arrived at the airport, it was Uncle Len who recognised our young family first.

I have no idea what made him take us in.  Their condo was so posh, I remember thinking.  My dad had a slightly panicked look when he saw all the very breakable and stain-able furniture and had begun to pre-empt any future incidents by hissing to us just not to touch anything.  at all.  ever.  What would LilBro know about that?  He was barely eighteen months old and everything was so gosh-darned pretty.  Uncle Len's gentle "no-no-no" while moving my brother's hand from the lamp to a toy is an indelible memory from those two weeks we spent living with them.

Yes, it was only two weeks.  Remember that house in Barrie?  Well, it was move-in ready for September first and the Don Mills condo had been sold.  They offered for us to come and live with them up there (how different life may have been!) but told us truthfully that jobs would be scarce.  Not ten days after meeting us, Uncle Len met our first Canadian landlord and stood as a guarantor for our lease, because no one was willing to take a chance on this young, unemployed couple so fresh-off-the-plane, they were still jet-lagged.  Mom and dad didn't disappoint.

Over the years, Uncle Len became like a surrogate grandfather and cool older uncle rolled into one.  I had lost three of my four grandparents already and my Dada was quite frail by the time he, too, passed, five years later.  Uncle Len bought me my first Bible (first communion), Scrabble board (tenth birthday) and thesaurus (the last Christmas in Scarborough).  More importantly, he was a role model for my dad and (later I found out) would always stick up for us when my parents were being particularly harsh.  He's the reason I was allowed to attend sleepovers when I was little, a concept completely lost on my parents.  He was very good to my brother too - taught him to play pool, gave him his cue (a beauty named Matilda) and christened him Small Fry (the junior version of Frenchie, my dad).

Uncle Len showed us with every action and gesture what it meant to be a classy, dignified and decent human being.  When he moved to London, it became difficult to see him more than once or twice a year; but, it felt good just to know he was around, to see his ruler-writing on birthday cards and notes tucked into random gifts he would send (badminton rackets and coffee mugs came with a note saying that I'd need both while away at university and, if I changed  my mind, Western wasn't too far away from their place).

I have no idea what he was thinking on Friday night when, surrounded by family and in his daughter's arms, he slipped away from us peacefully.  Typically, he had done it on his own terms, having already arranged for the funerary services, having just taken his last rites, having waited for the whispered words "you can go dad; I'll take care of mom" before sighing his last.  I hope, whatever it was, that he knew just how loved and honoured he was, just how much he touched all our lives and just how safe and comforted he made a little girl feel when he said "welcome home" on a hot August afternoon more than twenty years ago.  Goodbye Uncle Len.