I just found out that my Great Uncle Pete has died. He was 81 and still quite vital. He had driven around to see his Sister-in-Law, felt a bit off-colour, and told to lie down. When she returned an hour later he was dead. If only everyone had such a dignified death in this age of death-support machines.
My encounters with Uncle Pete were always brief and uncomfortable. He was a gritty Northerner who had risen up from being the son of a Butcher to one of the founders and President of Asda. In comparison, I was an effete Southerner who was squandering his life reading books. I always felt a little uncomfortable at the gulf between us.
Uncle Pete was my rich uncle, who would give my Sister and me £100 every year at Christmas. In response, I would dutifully write a two page thank you letter detailing what I was going to do with the money, what I had done at Christmas and my hopes for the new year. I never heard from him or had any inkling of what he thought of me, but I like to think that he looked on these letters with a kind of fascination. If, that is, he could read my handwriting.
Pete is dead now and I am reminded that we will die also. It’s sad but kind of bracing. I tend to think of humanity as being arranged in a pyramidal — with the children at the base and the very old at the tip. With each birth and each death you find yourself shunted further towards the summit. The higher you get, the more you tell yourself to relish what’s left, the more you feel impelled to make some kind of mark.
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