Where have you gone, Uncle John?

I remember how he would greet us, his four young nieces, with a cock of his head and a shy smile. Then without fail, that playful wink of his eye. And every time he winked at me, I felt like the most important person in the world.

On each and every visit to our Long Island home, he held a gift, generally a box of chocolates, tucked under one arm, and topped off with a simple tidy bow, for he would never dishonor my mother and arrive with “one hand as long as the other,” a favorite of her Irish expressions and a nod to proper etiquette.

Fresh off the boat from Ireland, the world was full of promise and dreams yet realized for my Uncle John. He had immigrated to America, like his older sister before him, to settle in Woodside, Queens where a job in construction awaited. Across the Irish Sea he came, to a land far different from the green fields of his home in Cloone, County Leitrim. And a new life beckoned.

I can see him clearly still, sitting quietly at our round white Formica kitchen table, contentedly reading the Irish newspapers as my mother prepared his breakfast. Always the same; a poached egg on one slice of toast and a cup of tea. For that he was grateful. I could see it in his eyes as he nodded at my mother as she placed the plate in front of her younger brother. A gentle and modest man he visited our family’s home once or twice a month, the frequency I imagine, having something to do with how far the scale tipped toward loneliness at any particular point in time.

And then he would be gone. No chocolates, no comforting wink, often, for months at a time. “Where is he,? Where is my Uncle John,?” I would query my mother, staring up at her intently with the innocent eyes of a six year old, who nevertheless, demanded an answer.

On some days when I asked her of my uncle she would turn from me but not before I glimpsed her eyes, dampened and shiny with tears. On other occasions when he went missing for a particularly long stint, she would simply retreat to her bedroom too distraught to respond to interrogation and I imagine as well, to quell the pain of a missing brother no longer shielded from the woes of the world by her fierce and protective arms.

But then he would return. Once again sitting at the same kitchen table, fork in hand, eating his poached egg on that single piece of toast made lovingly by his sister. On some days I noticed his hand would tremble as he lifted the cup of tea, served in my mother’s finest Lenox china, as beautiful and strong as her love for him.

And in that moment, all was right once again.

As the ebb and flow of life rose and fell over the passing years, my uncle John’s visits became a wee less frequent. And as I grew older, I at last learned the reason for his absences and my mother’s periodic sadness. “Your uncle has a disease,” she told us, “a terrible disease of drink, an affliction called Alcoholism.” And I learned that day that his sickness, was harder than most to conquer as there existed no pill or tonic to ease his pain. A terrible life sentence for her younger brother, my sweet Uncle John, whose cure required the mental strength of Goliath.

It has been three months..six months..eight months now. The longest stretch he has gone missing. I carefully watch my mother. Her mood shifts with time. In the early months, worry. And as the hands of time advance, desperation, followed by a simple aching sorrow. And in the end, the helpless inevitability of acceptance.

Her brother John, forever gone.

My mother never did learn what became of my uncle as it was likely he had lost all forms of identification during his drinking bouts. A face without a name, a body never found and tips from people who had known him from the neighborhood, that never quite panned out.

A man’s life ended. The hows and the whys forever unknown.

“He is probably buried in some pauper’s field,” my mother once lamented as I sat on the end of her bed one particularly bleak afternoon after the certainty my Uncle John had died. And then she told me a story. A story which few knew. A story, which broke my heart.

Before he came to the U.S., my Uncle John was in love and planning to marry a local Irish girl. But then, a dismaying discovery; his fiancee was a distant cousin. So distant in fact no one could quite trace the lineage. But it mattered little. Being a small town in rural Ireland, gossip often ran rampant. My mother said my uncle was mercilessly chided by all who learned the tale. They insisted he could never marry this young girl whose heart he held so dear. He too agreed and came to the realization it was not to be. Beaten down, my uncle John broke off the engagement and headed to America with a deep and profound sadness as heavy as the trunk that accompanied him. Shortly thereafter, his struggles with alcohol began, perhaps in trying to dull the memory of his one true love and a life together that would never be.

I often think of my mother and her heartache in losing her youngest brother with an ending always left untold. I wish I had thought to suggest a memorial for my sweet Uncle John, but never did. I am sorry for that, mom.

But though sadness engulfed his later life, I will remember my Uncle John. His gentle soul forever recalled in those cherished boxes of chocolates and heartfelt winks so generously bestowed in happier days☘️