A Listener's Story: Uncle Bud's Last Days

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See app for details. And we return to Our American Stories. Up next, a story from a regular contributor, Brent Timmons from Connecticut, entitled Uncle Bud's Last Days.

Take it away, Brent. I sat at Tinga's kitchen table listening to an album from the band and reflecting on my life with my Uncle Bud. He lay asleep, wiped out in the last days of his battle with pancreatic cancer.

He had just been diagnosed on April 8th. It was now May 10th. Tinga needed to go to work and left me to sit with Bud. I had arrived in Louisville on May 8th for a final visit and to help in any way I could. I opened my laptop to do some work, thought better, and instead opened a story I had written about the first visit with our kids to Louisville in 2006. A gush of emotion overcame me as I read the story. We had eventually made three more summer trips to see Bud and Tinga.

Every one of them was a precious time. Since I had arrived, Bud had slept much of the time. My intention to time my visit when he was still comfortable had failed. He could muster up his strength to sit with me and talk a few hours each day. I labored over what to discuss with him. I wondered what he would want to talk about.

I let him take the lead as much as he wanted and initiated some discussions about topics I wanted to discuss from a list I had made when he first broke the news to me. Then one morning that labor ceased. I heard Bud stirring and found he had gotten into the shower. After he finished and returned to bed, I pulled up a chair beside him and about the time he said, How you doing, son? I broke down, trying to control my emotions.

I looked away and sensed him waiting for it to pass. Once it did, I told him that what I liked about writing was the fact I could look back at what I had written, see what I was thinking at the time, and see the change between then and now. He asked what had changed, and from that we launched into a two-hour conversation. It was wonderful. It was relaxing.

There was no labor. We discussed what matters most. I told him that part of his influence on my life was that he had done his best to impart what he had learned from life to me, and that had shaped the way I think. It was an impressive feat on his part, given the fact that while we are similar in temperament, we are drastically different in some quarters.

I told him that part of his influence on my life in temperament, we are drastically different in some core beliefs. When I saw he was tiring, and as the time approached for the hospice nurse to arrive, I left him to rest. The nurse arrived a little late, but once she left, Bud wanted to talk more. We sat another few hours and he poured out more thoughts, many of them about his struggles with his relationship with his father. This would become a routine over the next few days.

Bud would rest in bed, then muster the strength to either get up or have me sit by his side and talk. Many of the conversations revolved around the major events and relationships that shaped his life, molded his thinking, and drove him to do certain things. We discussed how the tingle blood from his grandfather Asher had been passed on to his father Elias, to Bud, to me through my mother, and now to my sons Elias and Asher. That blood seems to produce very complicated, multifaceted men.

We could put our fingers on that imprint in every one of the men I just mentioned. As we talked, I could easily identify the tingle influence in my life. That blood produces men who seem to end up carrying a great weight due to the minds it creates and the actions it tends to lead us to. We talked about how that weight was finally lifted, at least partially, in the life of Bud at the age of 44.

He described it as being freed from a chain, freed from bondage, having that great weight lifted off his shoulders. That concern of mine, of what to discuss with my uncle, resolved itself. It appeared we both wanted to discuss the same thing, the things that had the greatest impact on our lives, things that shaped who we had become. I made it clear that he had done a great deal to shape who I had become. Among the many influences in my life, part of who I am has to do with our tingle blood. Part of it has to do with his lifelong attempt to share what he had learned in life. I felt like, in these last days, he wanted reassurance he had accomplished a positive influence to some degree.

It was easy for me to do that. In these last conversations, he was reminding me of who I am. Yes, I am a Timmons, and that influence is for another story.

But I am also a tingle. I have understood that influence since my teenage years. In talking to Bud, it only became more apparent.

We have our faults, yes, but working through those faults makes us better men. The very act of working through them makes us stronger. I had come to help Uncle Bud and Tinka in Bud's last days. Instead, it was Bud who helped me. He reminded me that it takes a lifetime to complete the work of influencing those around us.

It is slow and calculated work, and requires great patience and determination. And when the work is done, we can rest, knowing we have completed the task. It was his last great gift to me.

Thank you, Uncle Bud. The day before I was to leave, I asked whether the timing of my departure was good, wondering whether I should linger a while longer. He said, there is life at your home that you need to attend to, and here there is death. You need to go home.

While I conceded that the time to return home was right, I disagreed with the idea that here there is death. There is only the passing of your physical body, Bud. Your life will continue to be with us.

You have worked a lifetime to make sure of that. as well of all of our stories on OurAmericanStories.com. And we love to hear stories that are more eulogies than anything else in remembrances, and particularly in these most core relationships in our lives as fathers, as mothers, as siblings, as aunts and uncles, and grandparents, because this is where most learning occurs. So much of the fundamental learning in our lives occurs. If you have any of those stories, send them again to OurAmericanStories.com, because you are the stars of this show, too.

You are listeners. Brett Timmons' story about his Uncle Bud's last days here on Our American Stories. Small Business Saturday is November 25th, so let's go shop small with American Express, because everything you want is in the neighborhood. Your new style is in the neighborhood.

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