My Uncle died.

[I hate to admit it, but this needed editing. I know better than to post when writing time is crunched... but I keep doing it anyway.]

I don't want to call him my favorite uncle of all time, because all of them took their turn in that post. I had, uh...[1, 2, 3,...] eight uncles back in the seventies. I'm down to four. The youngest one was the first to go in 1980.

But Uncle Bill was my first favorite: he was brilliant with little kids.

I started to write this Friday, but that was as far as I got. The Minister, a family member, said that Uncle Bill always brightened up a room when he entered it. He always made you feel welcome...that he was glad to see you...that you were important.

As I went through life as a fat kid, a gawky teenager, a jock, a smart-alecky college kid, family man and lately, a fat, old, bald guy, I can tell you that it's absolutely true.

Uncle Bill was a wiry cowboy type - he looked, and dressed, like someone you'd find wrangling cows on a ranch. And he did his share of that kind of thing. "Wiry" is a funny pun - he made his living as an electrician.

I won't do his whole biography, I'm not qualified. (I would be, if I'd learn to take notes.)
...
Muskogee didn't get hit by the ice storm, though Tulsa, 40 miles to the northwest, was shut down. The funeral was on Monday; I was going to come back North Tuesday, but that's when the storm hit... So, I was stuck.

28 people died, last I heard, due to the ice storm, mostly in car accidents. I'd be surprised to find out that even one of them wasn't a tragic loss to humanity. Each of their unique contributions to society are now lost.

It's just as well I didn't try to drive in that, I was in no shape to drive Tuesday. I had some kind of inexplicable disease that day (fever, aches and pains, I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed...uh ... other unpleasant symptoms) that cleared up by the next morning.