Relative Stranger

Rachel was having trouble shifting in her seat, her feet tightly confined by the overstuffed backpack on the floor.  Everyone in the cabin was asleep, but Rachel was too uncomfortable and her thoughts too disturbing.  It was impossible for her to think of how she could survive for fourteen hours across the Pacific.  At barely five feet tall, she considered it almost humorous to even think that she could feel so cramped in a seat.

At any other time in her life, she would have been excited about traveling halfway around the world to Australia.  Having accepted an invitation to speak at a conference, she had the opportunity to get away from home - alone.  How could she not experience a thrill as she viewed the monitor that tracked the flight across the equator and the dateline?  The Xanax didn’t help her relax and her stomach still ached.

Rachel remembered leaving Kennedy Airport with the terrible knot in her stomach.  The memory of her previous day’s visit to the nursing home would not fade.  It remained in her mind, so vivid that she was afraid to close her eyes.   He was so thin and could barely speak. He did not recognize anyone - not her husband, not her mother, and not her.  The voice that emanated from his emaciated body was one she had never heard before and would never hear again.  He yelled at the physician with all his strength. Panic – or was it a confused anger that resounded.  “I don’t understand!” he yelled.  “I don’t understand!”  No one could understand and perhaps no one ever would.

Constant worry ran through her veins.  The man Rachel had left in the nursing home was so different from the man she had known, with whom she could talk about anything.  Throughout her life, he was always interested in her and she had known for years that he bragged about her accomplishments.  And he was the only one who would really listen to her, even when she was an obstinate teenager so long ago.

No one ever asked Rachel’s uncle why he never married.  No one ever asked him why he chose to live with her grandparents until they died.  No one ever asked to visit his apartment.  Everyone knew not to ask.  Everyone respected his privacy and his wishes.  No one wanted to pry.  They all said “That’s Jake.”

And how he loved Rachel’s children!  After Rachel’s father died, Uncle Jake stepped into the role of grandfather.  Filled with pride at every school performance.  Laughing with joy while reading their report cards.  Thrilled to attend Rachel’s son’s little league games -- and watch as his grandnephew caught the final out to win the championship.  She remembered how he talked about that game for two years, describing every detail of Adam’s facial expressions, describing how the bases were loaded, describing how all the kids ran to him, easily lifting him onto their shoulders.  The entire team triumphantly parading Adam around the ball field after the ball – somehow – miraculously – had landed in his glove.

Rachel would later come to realize, though, that he never spoke about himself.  Her uncle was a fantastic listener.  And the reality was that she really didn’t know her father’s brother as well as she thought.