HoJo

Missing someone, who is gone, is hard. My father will be gone one day and a fear I'll feel nothing when he's gone. Sure he's been ill so long, but I have no quick memories to connect happiness with him. Amazing he was my Uncle Howard's brother and they were so close.

My uncle was smart and caring, two things I cannot say about my dad. Though the latter is not brain dead nor outwardly cruel, but compared HoJo he's Homer Simpson to Ned Flanders.

I could write a lot about my uncle, but he's gone and no one reading this would have known him. I just miss him. I could have seen him more.

While I was in school, he would have picked me up for church any given Sunday. I could have gone to more of my cousin's games while I was in grad school, he was always there with his camera and bag of lenses. I could have driven to see him more when he retired to fight his colon cancer that had reached his liver and eventually killed him.

I was in Columbus a month before he passed for a conference. I wanted to see him, so I called. He wasn't having a good day and it wouldn't be a good time for a visit.

That may have been the last time I ever spoke with him.

If Heaven exists, my uncle is there.

I have my memories of him and most of them are of good times. I just have to be the person he'd want me to be and to pass the love he had for me forward in all I do.