Great Uncles

An homage to my Great Uncle Art (1925–2024)

First, a note: I know I’m saying it wrong. What I mean is my grandmother’s sister’s husband, who is a granduncle. It is a common misusage to say great-uncle, which would be one generation up, but since my whole family is wrong I will keep being wrong with them.

Recently, my great-uncle Art passed into the beyond. He died a few weeks and it’s taken me a bit to wrap my head around it. We were not terribly close, except I’d known him my whole life. We didn’t know each other very well, but I loved him. I thought a lot about Art’s wife, my great-aunt Joan, who never expected to have him so long but got him for sixty-two years. I thought a lot about my grandma too—Uncle Art was almost 99 when he died, like Grandma is almost 99 now. It is hard to lose a friend you’ve had for that long.

I’ve been lucky in this life to have had many great, great-uncles. The comma is unnecessary there, but I want you to know who they were (my great-uncles), as well as how they were (they were great). My own dad was lacking in my life for much of my childhood but the universe seemed to make that up to me in uncles.

I have one uncle in particular who is great, but not a great-uncle, who is more like a dad to me in many ways. He is smart and a teaser and a cynic and a helper, always dropping things at…