Japandamonium!!!

I don’t know what to write really. My Uncle Herbie is passing away. What a marvelous man he is. I don’t know what to say, I don’t feel like telling you how amazing he was in words on a screen; instead we will listen to jazz together and tell warm, funny jokes to make each other laugh; we will invest our lives in the bonds of tight friendship and close family; we will tell the stories that make young boys grow into young men; we will love a life of honesty and loyalty humor and music; and we will stay friends for the rest of our lives, and then we’ll have some small idea of the beautiful life that my Uncle Herb lived in this world. I see life more clearly when I am with Uncle Herb, I hear the sounds of a good life echoed more clearly through the air, music and laughter and wisdom fill up the space around him in my life and in mind.

When I was fifteen I snuck two Playboy magazines out of his house for the dirty pictures. It was later that I realized he had kept these ones for the articles; each had an installment of a four-part piece on Jazz. Once I knew this I felt terrible for robbing him of half of his jazz story, but I never figured out how to give them back. What a stupid thing to do.

Over the last year or so I have been becoming much closer with Uncle Herb and Aunt Quillie, since that trip for Nanny’s 80th birthday, visiting them once in DC and speaking on the phone. I bought a postcard in a store for them a few weeks ago, with a photo of Sonny Stitt and Dizzy Gillespie, but I hadn’t written it yet, only their names. I can only imagine what Quillie is feeling, or Steve and Tana, or Nanny, to whom I haven’t mailed anything since I’ve been here, i can't believe that's true but it is. I wish I were home to be with everyone. I wish I were there for Jason and Brandon to help them feel … I don’t know, I don’t know how I’d help them feel, I just remember when I lost my grandfather and I’m the closest boy to their age in the whole family, so maybe I would be helpful somehow. Steve was the closest man to my age when Bepop died, and I remember him at the Funeral and how it helped to see him there. And the boys are younger than I was, and spent much more time with Herb. I can’t believe that my Uncle Herbie is passing away and I’m so far away from him and from my family, for them and for me. What a strange time to be so far away from everything I know.

What a strange time. I guess I know that my family will be alright without me, but they shouldn’t have to be. They are losing someone and will be coming together, and everyone should be there to help everyone else, there is such a huge rift in our hearts that it takes everyone’s help to sound its depths and know its feeling. They will already be without Herb, they shouldn’t have to be without anyone else.

What a sad thing, what a sad thing. I don’t know what to write to help me or help you, a great light is sinking below the horizon and we all must bow our heads.