Farewell to the Major General (1924-2012)

“When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground.” ~African proverb

When I was very small, I’d get he and his brother confused – my two uncles.  The way I finally distinguished them was: The One That Will Stand on His Head, and The One That Will Not Stand on His Head.

My Uncle Bill was the one that would not stand on his head. And I didn’t look at this as a bad thing. He had a certain dignity, and poise, and way of doing things that just didn’t lend itself to head standing. It lent itself to Gilbert & Sullivan, and the practice of medicine, and button up shirts, and the study of the natural world, and gazing at the distance over the prow of a boat.  There was a way things were done, and a way things were not done.  And standing on one’s head on demand in the middle of my living room was not done. And I respected that.

My mom would talk about how they’d sing together all the time when they were kids. “Oh, you should have heard Bill when he did The Modern Major General in the Pirates of Penzance. He was really something,” she’d giggle. And then she’d start singing it herself, with her chin down, looking very serious and trying to show me how he’d done it – hand gestures and all.

I am the very model of a modern Major-General
I’ve information vegetable, animal, and mineral
I know the kings of England, and I quote the fights historical
From Marathon to Waterloo, in order categorical

I’m very well acquainted, too, with matters mathematical
I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical
About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news
With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypotenuse…

And that’s about as far as she’d get before she was laughing so hard she had to stop.  But it was long enough for me to imagine her in her banana curls and Mary Janes watching her big brother put on airs, and become the Modern Major General before her eyes.  “We were thick as thieves,” she’d say. She thought the world of her big brother, and she ended up marrying his best friend.

I remember visiting my aunt and uncle one summer and getting to go on their boat. My Uncle Bill, like the rest of my clan had salt water in his veins. We were also coastal people, but my coast was old and sandy, with locust trees and beach grass, and the sun rose over it. His coast was wild and rocky, with waterfalls and evergreens, and the sun set on it. In addition to this exotic species of coast, they had a power boat with a cabin and a kitchen – the Bacchus. I’d only ever been on sailboats, and the Bacchus was a mighty and awe-inspiring machine.

And it had a big wheel. I was watching my uncle drive the boat somewhere along the coast of Vancouver, when he turned to me and he asked, “Would you like to steer?” I thought he was kidding. I was 7, and this boat was very big and very important, and I was neither. But he seemed to think I could do it, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. And so I took a very deep breath, and took the wheel. And he showed me how it worked the opposite way from a tiller on a sailboat, and told me where to point the bow.  As soon as I took the wheel, he went about his business, looking at charts and puttering around. He was probably keeping an eagle eye on me, but it didn’t feel like it.  The boat was mine. I don’t even think I blinked – my eyes were like lasers on that one spot. Terrible things might happen if I deviated. I had been trusted. I steered until I was utterly exhausted.

Me at the helm of the Bacchus

It’s funny, the things you remember. But I remember that – the first (and probably the only) time someone handed me the wheel of something in a wild and strange place, and walked away.

My Uncle Bill died yesterday morning. The last of his siblings, after The One Who Would Stand on His Head, and The One Who Wrote Books, and then my mom. He was the last of my Grandmother’s children. The last of the family that lived in that little house together, and weathered the hard times of the Great Depression, and World War II, and family illness. When you are the last to go, it means you’ve had to say goodbye to everyone else. You get the hard job of mourning them all, parents and siblings, one by one. But they’ve been spared from mourning you.

He went peacefully, surrounded by his own family – an amazing clan of his own who ask questions, and care about the right things, and love beauty, and hand write letters. His last days were spent with hand held, listening to classical music, and watching the boats on Puget Sound out the window as the tide went in and out – as it should have been.

Farewell Major General, and may you have calm seas.

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