Funcle
On uncles who haunt, uncles who show up, and the ones still deciding which to be. By Timothy Linder
I wake up with the same familiar hangover on a Thursday morning after stumbling home from my monthly writing workshop. More than the craft beer we drank, the words I said throb in my veins: Why would you share that? How are you even qualified to run a workshop, you haven’t even published your own book, you stupid piece of… I roll over and pick up my phone. Where are the games this weekend? I text my sister, asking when I might drive down to see my nephews’ baseball games. I haven’t seen them in months since my sister’s birthday, and don’t like to go more than a month. I’m a shit uncle, too. Great.
The night before, I drafted a poem about my dad’s brother:
Volcanology
The concrete is hot lava and we tiptoe along cement parking blocks
in empty lots, we assume the cigarette butts set fire to the earth,
but we balance on these unmoving safety beams, as steam rises
from the fiery ground. Just imagine: it is not even springtime
and there is steam, but from the warm rain that melted the frost-
bitten parking lot earlier that morning, we know how lava moves,
how it swallows everything, everyone. Once when our uncle babysat,
he gave us the V encyclopedia to read, and we were fascinated by red,
by explosions, by Pompeii…Volcanoes. And our uncle fell asleep
with a cigarette lit in his mouth and burned an O in the couch,
we saw it when it was fresh with red edges, then later when it cooled:
Black, hardened fabric that seemed to grow and might crumble,
but upside-down on the couch so we would not fall in. And now,
the lava flows everywhere. On the dark tiles of a checkered floor,
on the carpet, in the parking lot, and we cross, one leg in front of the other,
and we jump to the next block, and sometimes we slip, and we wonder
what happens when we get to the end. Do we turn around and balance again,
or pretend that we’re not in danger, that the ground is not lava?
When I think about Uncle Dougie, I remember when he scared the shit out of me. While sitting in my grandparents’ dark living room with the fake fireplace lined with dusty pewter cups, my family and I sat on old couches with stitched blankets and lopsided pillows. We were taught the house was haunted since it was built in 1770, and when a man descended the stairs near the front of a room in a skull and crossbones shirt with a mask on, my sister and I screamed and cried. It was, of course, the one person who wasn’t in the room: Uncle Dougie.
I can’t remember if this was before or after his son, Jason died in a car crash at 17, nor how that grief transformed him, my grandparents, my parents. My sister was seven and I was six, and my memories of Uncle Dougie were mostly that he lived in an RV in what used to be my grandparents’ garden behind their garage.
He came and went through that old house like a ghost, and as we grew up, we saw him less and less, and we celebrated most of our holidays with my mom’s side of the family.
One spring day, I must have been about 11 or 12, I was home alone while my parents watched my sister’s softball game. Sitting at the house computer, a car pulled in front of the house and parked. Two men got out of the car and came to the door, one was Uncle Dougie, the other was a man with slicked back hair.
“Where’s your old man?” Uncle Dougie said.
“At Alyssa’s game,” I said, slightly nervous. We hugged and he introduced me to his friend.
“This is my Godson!” he told the man. The two went into the kitchen, pulled out a bottle of scotch and poured two glasses.
“Look at this watch!” Uncle Dougie said, calling me into the kitchen and shaking his wrist to show what must have been an expensive watch. I feigned marvel, fidgeting a little bit. He looked different than I remembered. His clothes seemed slightly nicer, he seemed happy. It must have been three years since I saw him last. The interaction was short lived, and they were on their way within a half hour, leaving me alone again.
“Don’t be a stranger,” my uncle said before he left, as if I could make it further than the town borders on my own. The interaction was mostly innocent, but I felt uneasy. When I told my parents, they were surprised to hear this, and matched my discomfort. Though we didn’t explicitly talk about what Uncle Dougie had been up to, I gathered he was spending a lot of time in New York City, possibly involved with drugs, alcohol, and shady people. The next time I saw him was in a hospital bed on Long Island when I was sixteen. Besides moving to a long-term care facility, he never made it out.
Between Uncle Dougie and my mom’s brothers, what I learned about uncles is that they were a) trouble and b) needed to be respected because of their time served in the U.S. military. By blood, my sister and I have had three uncles, with several more ‘uncles’ that we’d see at the alternate holidays, like the Super Bowl, random Saturday in January for a Christmas Exchange, Backyard Barbecue. These other uncles were always around, randomly, like the “family you choose”, except we didn’t choose them, and they always felt like jerks to me, the way they’d make fun of each other constantly.
After Uncle Dougie’s funeral, we had drinks and food - and all the uncles were there, blood and bros. He was always a little weird when we were back in high school. Uncle L said, but he was always around.
Was he always around at one point in life? Was he actually weird, or were these guys just assholes?
Thinking about my genetic makeup, I always saw myself in both of my grandfathers - the crossword puzzles, emotional, horoscoping pop-pop on my mom’s side, the writer and reader on my dad’s side. And I’d wondered if I ever became an uncle, who would I be like? The present one who feels like they’re not there? The one who’s not there but feels like he’s haunting everyone? The kind-of-an-asshole?
***
Laying on the hospital couch facing the back cushions, outstretched, the sun started to make its way through the hallway and into the waiting area. My family and I waited for news on the birth of my nephew. After over a day in labor and agonizing pain, they transferred my sister to the operating room to perform a C-section.
“Any news?” Rob texted me.
“Nothing yet.” We were on a break, but he felt part of the family and wanted to be there for me, for us, was what he said when he dropped me off at the hospital. Not long after, my first nephew, was born - with his little mop of hair and chubby cheeks. I never saw anything like it.
Becoming an uncle was easy for me - as a person constantly aware of the brevity of life, the future was here and needed to be prioritized. I spent weekend days with my sister and the family in their house as the curtains were drawn to encourage naps. It always felt so dark, but the giggles, the rolling over, the pure curiosity lit the toy-filled room.
I was settling down myself - at this time, Rob and I were planning to get our apartment. My best friend was readying to have her first baby. This was it - how life becomes what we’re drawing in elementary school - the houses, the dogs, the stick figures, the sun in the corner. I was quickly deemed the funcle. But it didn’t last.
Rob and I split, he wanted a house deep in the suburbs, I wanted to be out and meet new people, live a new life every day. I doubt my nephews remember him, and after years of heartache, I rejected the idea of a traditional life.
When I moved to Jersey City in 2022, I made a thousand new friends while swaying to local bands, starting a writing group, and bouncing between the local dives. I started traveling again. I fell in love again. I was living the life I didn’t know I needed. But with that, the distance between me and the next generation grew. I only saw them if I drove down to the suburbs since they’re all afraid of parallel parking. When I return home people ask if I found someone, if I’m settling down yet.
Settle down? I thought it was some crazy concept. I just woke up with Taco Bell in my bed.
I tell my nephews about my writing when I see them, share my medals I received for the 5ks I ran (but I didn’t win it, Uncle T), show videos from the music festivals that I went to. Getting out of bed and walking to the cafe, I think of Uncle Dougie’s watch. After his son died, he found something to pursue, something to bring him back to life, and we’ll never know what it really was about, even if it was to his detriment, even if that meant we didn’t see him. Did he think about what he would do differently as a parent? Or if he could have another?
I often wonder what my nephews need more, their uncle in the stands at their baseball game, or their uncle pursuing joy so fucking hard every day.
I barely know my high-school-best-friend’s kids, a reality I didn’t expect. But I think about them, I write about them, and I wonder if my uncles thought about me, too, when they were on their journeys.
It’s probably too late for me to become a father now, especially since I don’t want a partner and, well, student loans. But some mornings when I am doing the crossword at a cafe, I imagine I have a son and he’s sitting across from me with his backpack on. I tell him school will be there when we get there. Take this time. Tell me what you’re looking forward to today, what you’re afraid of. Tell me, and then let’s get through this day.