The Uncle Nobody Liked

When someone you love dies, it sucks, but at least there’s a protocol. A memorial service, a funeral, friends and loved ones swaddling you with condolences and clichés.

So sorry for your loss.

He lived a great life.

He would hate to see us all crying here! And yet, we all just sit there and cry—because we’re sad and that’s what you do.

But what about when you’re not sad? What do you do when a person dies, and there’s not a tear to be cried for them? There’s not a nice word to be said, not a friend to be found.

Terrible as it sounds, those were my thoughts when a police officer, who barely looked old enough to drive, knocked on my door.

“Good afternoon, are you Derek”—he looked down, double-checking his notes—“Erick?”

I chuckled. “That’s me. Feel free to laugh at the name, that’s what my parents wanted.”

Instead of laughing, he removed his hat, placing it over his heart. I’d seen enough TV shows to know what that meant. I braced myself for the worst.

Who could it be?

My brother was an ER doctor in a dangerous city.

My sister drank too much and worked out too little.

My parents lived in Florida. FLORIDA!

I imagined that I was on a morose game show: Who died anyway? The young cop was wearing a suit, holding a microphone, swinging his arms toward a giant Family Feud-style board. The crowd chanted in unison, “WHO DIED ANYWAY!”

“It’s your uncle Glenn.”

“Oh,” I said, but not the deflating ‘oh’ that one makes upon hearing something awful has happened, nor like the noise a balloon makes when it’s pierced with a needle, its life slowly oohing away. This was the ‘oh’ one makes when a waiter brings you a Coke instead of a Pepsi.

Oh, okay, that’s fine. There’s a difference in taste, but it’s nothing to cry about.

Uncle Glenn’s body was found by his housekeeper. Perplexingly, I was listed as his next of kin.

“Are you sure?” I asked. I hadn’t spoken to Uncle Glenn in years.

“Seems that way,” the way-too-young cop replied.

I was supposed to go to Glenn’s house, figure out if there was anything there that I wanted. 

“Sorry for your loss,” the cop said as he left.

“Um, thanks,” I guess.

I sat on my couch, trying to remember my last interaction with Uncle Glenn. It seemed the right thing to do, to try to honor his memory with memory. 

I racked my brain. Could it have been when I met him for lunch by my office, and he wouldn’t stop leering at that intern?

“Nice, very nice,” Glenn had said, smacking his crusty lips together.

No—that wasn’t right. I’d run into him at a bar a few years back. He put an arm around me. “D-erick,” he barked a laugh, his body smelling like an ashtray cosplaying as a brewery.

“H-how yerrr dad?” meaning his brother. “How come he doesn’t wanna come hang about with his old—” He fell over, nearly dragging me down to the disgusting floor of the bar. “Old brotherrr.”

I helped him off the ground, paid for his drink and a cab home, and that was the last time I saw him.

My parents didn’t pick up when I called. I started typing out a text, but then deleted it. My dad might have hated his brother, but there was something wrong about relaying this news through a text.

He would probably respond with a yellow thumbs up… 

While I waited for my parents to call back, I started typing a text to my siblings. It had been a long time since I’d spoken to either of them. My brother was always busy, and my sister was all over the place.

Hey guys, 

Uncle Glenn is dead. ) : 

I deleted it, figuring my dad would call back, and he could let them know.

I drove to Glenn’s house, feeling an unexpected sadness in my chest, a longing for something I couldn’t quite explain.

Could I actually be sad about Glenn? Were these feelings born of repressed grief? No, that didn’t seem right. I didn’t like the man, nobody did.

My memories of Uncle Glenn were a sewage-infested river; no matter how deep I sought, there was nothing but waste.

It was less than thirty minutes to Glenn’s house. A modest two-bedroom at the top of a precarious hill. If there were any other vehicles, it would have been impossible to park; of course, there were not.

The front door opened with no resistance. I pinched my nose, bracing for the decaying scent of the recently deceased, but that was not the smell that greeted me.

Lysol. Cleaning supplies. Alcoholic wipes.

It seemed the cleaning woman was not too upset to complete her duties. In fact, the home was unnervingly tidy. It was like nobody ever lived here.

I wanted to leave, to get back in my car and drive away. There was nothing for me here, nothing for anyone. Yet, I moved deeper into the house.

Twenty minutes. No more than that.

I started to search the house, to what end, I was not sure. I did not drink wine, so I had no interest in the dozens of unopened bottles in the kitchen. Nor did I have any interest in the several half-full bottles in the otherwise empty fridge.

Were you supposed to put wine in the fridge? Probably not.

The second bedroom was a shrine to the Buffalo Bills. Four different Josh Allen jerseys hung from the walls, held up by bronze pushpins.

A novelty license plate, painted in winter blue with shades of red, claimed, “This is our year!”

It never was. Uncle Glenn would never cheer while Josh Allen hoisted the Lombardi Trophy.

Imagine telling a five-year-old child that he was going to live for sixty years and never see his football team win it all.

Had the Bills even been around for sixty years? Probably not.

At last, I found myself in Glenn’s bedroom. It was as unremarkable as the rest of the house, nothing but a full-sized mattress, a dresser, and a desk with a computer.

In another time, this might be where I discovered a box of handwritten letters, lamenting my family, cursing out my father, berating my mother.

But Glenn was a modern creature. He was never the type to gripe about the old days, to carp about “us kids today.” He would not have written letters like many people of his age.

I turned on the computer.

If Glenn had any words from the beyond, he would say them from a screen.

The computer sputtered to life. It had no password. His email popped open with a chime.

Again, I couldn’t say what I was searching for on his computer. It certainly wasn’t the emails he’d sent to my father. Dozens over the last twenty years. It had been fifteen years since my dad replied.

I clicked through them all, expecting to find an exact message where my father cut his brother off. But there was no smoking gun. Glenn mostly sent crude jokes, memes, and strange videos.

I opened one from 2009, a fake video of George Bush serenading Obama. My dad replied, “Lol.”

Eventually, he stopped replying.

And eventually, Glenn stopped writing them. That’s what I thought, until I checked his drafts.

My heart dropped. There were hundreds of unsent emails. Jokes, memes, videos. Most were to my dad. Some to my mom. Shockingly, a few were to me and my siblings.

Not a single one was ever sent.

I searched my name, which came back with eight hits. Seven were of the dumb joke variety, but one was different. Written four years ago:

D-erick! It was great hanging out at the bar yesterday! Thanks for picking up the tab, next rounds are on me. 

Cheers, 

Uncle Glenn! 

Never sent.

I stared at those emails for a long time, looking at all the jokes my uncle thought about sending his brother, but never did.

I can’t explain why, but I badly wanted to send them all. I wanted to give my uncle one last shout into the wind, one last stupid joke for the road.

I hovered over the send button for longer than I’d like to admit. Ultimately, I decided against it. It wasn’t my place.

I shut down the computer and walked out of Uncle Glenn’s home.

In the car, I typed out another text to my siblings:

Just went to Uncle Glenn’s. Found some weird stuff on his computer…

I deleted it. It felt wrong using him as a punchline. I couldn’t lie to myself and pretend that I ever liked him, but I felt an affection for him in death that I never did in life.

Would that make him happy? Probably not.

I started the car, backed down the steep driveway. I cast a final glance at Uncle Glenn’s house, then said,

“Hey Siri, call my brother.”