My Uncle Amoz

Uncle Amoz and me when I was first born.

This spring one of my uncles died. It was very sad, and the circumstances of his death were crazy. 

He was too young - it shouldn't have happened.

All of us were shocked. Many were angry.

Many still are.

It's crazy how death makes life appear so differently. Especially when death happens to someone you know.

What's even sadder... I wasn't able to go to his funeral because I was traveling and too far away to catch a ride with anyone that was going.

This post, though, is not going to dwell on the circumstances of his death. 

It's going to be more about him.

I never liked to do favorites. I always told people it was wrong to have favorites... at the same time I had them ;) But to be fair I would try to make sure my siblings would have different favorites than I did.

Such as...

Me to my sisters: My favorite color  is pink. What are yours?

Sisters: I don't know.

Me to Jerushah: You can like orange and yellow.

Me to Beckah Jo: You can like purple.

Me: And my color is pink.

The crazy thing? Those were our favorite colors for years after... ;p

I did the same things with our aunts and uncles... to makes things fair ;) 

I guess this was back in the days when it was "cool" for guys to bleach their hair ;) 

   

Uncle Amoz was always a favorite uncle of mine (on Dad's side). 

He was handsome (one time I thought I'd marry him when I grew up). He had an awesome motorcycle. His hair was always crazy. He was fun - and nice.

My favorite memory involves him.

I was about 7 or 8. At the time there were only three of us siblings, and my mom was expecting my brother Jesse.

Uncle Amoz was living with us, and he'd turned our playhouse into his storage shed.

I have always been very organized and all about getting things done. 

One day I said to Jonny and Ruie (Jerushah), "We should take our play house back!"

"I don't know if that's a good idea," they said cautiously. 

"Of course it is! We'll never get it back unless we take it back. It's ours anyways."

It wasn't hard to persuade them. 

The three of us went to the blue shed Dad had given us. And we cleaned house. Boxes, bags, crates. All were overturned and sorted through. Almost everything flew out the windows - clothes, papers, tools, and other junk.

I let my brother, my sister, and me keep a few things that looked nice - things our uncle surely wouldn't miss.

We spent most of our afternoon reclaiming our place. And when we finished we had an amazing feeling of accomplishment - a clean playhouse surrounded by piles of unwanted things.

But, oh my! Wasn't Uncle Amoz mad when he got home!

"What did you kids do?"

We were all a bit timid... but not enough so to let him put the things back inside our play house.

He saw the things we kept... I had a small tool kit and a picture of myself.

"These are my things. You can't have them," he told me.

"Can't I have the picture?" I argued.

"Fine." That's all he'd let me keep... a picture of me.

He gathered up his things... we never saw them again. And we were fine with that... and as we got older we loved to tell the story as an example of what we kids were capable of ;) 

Of how we kept our play house.

Oh... people sometimes wonder where Mom was.... she was inside laughing on the phone to Grandma, too pregnant and tired to stop us as she watched from a window.

As I've grown older and we've moved a lot I didn't see much of my uncle when I was older. But I've always considered him a favorite. I really do wish sometimes I'd known him better... but I am happy for the memories I do have.

And I hope that he is in Heaven with Yahweh - what we all call God. 

Life is a crazy thing. But memories are beautiful, even in death. 

And I'm glad I have those :)