Dry Cleaned Flannel and Other Acts of Love

 

Saturday evening, while I tried to fall asleep after midnight in a borrowed bed in our friends’ apartment in Chicago, my phone beeped telling me I had a text message. It was from my mom in the Dominican Republic telling me my dad had been urgently trying to get a hold of me all evening. I knew right away why. The next morning he called and confirmed that his brother had died Saturday evening. 

Uncle Denny died peacefully after a relatively brief fight with cancer. He knew he didn’t have long. When he sat in an exam room a few months ago the doctor pointed to a screen to show him a softball sized tumor by his heart. “This one here? This one’s going to kill you.” If it didn’t the fifteen others probably would have. Dennis was grateful for his frankness.

 

I have only ever known my uncle as a large, gentle child of a man. Growing up he was everything my father claims not to have been at the time – tall, handsome, athletic, popular.  Then in the seventies he cooked his brain on LSD, found Jesus, and became what I have always known him to be – nervous, a tad behind in any conversation, funny, and perhaps the kindest, gentlest man I have ever known. Wide-eyed when he wasn’t wearing giant flip-up sunglasses, he always had the look of a mad scientist in the clothing of a fisherman. Picture Albert Einstein at a Springsteen concert.

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My uncle had his nicest flannel shirt and jeans dry cleaned to come to our wedding. When I found that out I almost cried. It meant more than if he’d shown up in a three-piece suit. He did, of course, wear his flip-up sunglasses. His thoughtful attire almost topped the black long-sleeved t-shirt with howling wolves he gave me as a wedding present. Lyndie’s, I believe, had doves. We kept them for years because of what they meant, though I don’t believe we ever wore them out of the house.

When he attended my sister’s wedding in 1995, he walked into the bathroom in our house while my brother-in-law was using the toilet. Rather than say excuse me and walk back out, he struck up a conversation, announcing to the urinating man he had never met, “I’ve always wanted to be a cat.” I really have nothing else to offer on that story.

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A month ago my dad flew home to visit Dennis and prepare his final arrangements in advance, and on a Saturday afternoon I drove the few hours to the town I grew up in and spent the afternoon with my dad and uncle. When I arrived at his nursing home the two of them asked me jokingly to solve a bet over which one of them was uglier. I begged off, but they both offered compelling verbal arguments.

We sat in the cramped apartment and watched college basketball as I tried to assess my uncle out of the corner of my eye. He was bent, thin, and on oxygen, though still had the characteristic wide-eyed look and unkempt hair he has had as long as I can remember. After a few moments my dad got up and said he was going down to the rec room to look at something. After 29 years I am pretty attuned to my dad’s attempts at subtlety, but I didn’t catch this one. My uncle and I sat in silence watching the game for a moment before he blurted out, “He left to give us a chance to get to know each other. He’s just trying to do a good thing.” We hadn’t seen each other since my wedding, and I’m not really sure why. I have always thought fondly of him.

I shared some inane facts about our lives, about our jobs and Yosi and our house. He pointed out some pictures he had of us on his side table, and I told him I would send him some more when I got back to Ohio. I used the restroom at one point and he told he to be careful with his handicap-friendly toilet seat so I didn’t get myself wet. I joked, “Please tell me you let me my dad figure that out for himself the first time.” He looked at me like I had asked if he liked punting kittens off his balcony and asked why I would suggest that. I told him I was kidding. He smiled after a second and said, “Oh. Well, we don’t really know each other. I don’t know your humor yet.” I peed and tried to figure out how to translate my dry humor into a more relatable form.

We went out for dinner and he threw balled up napkins at my dad and they joked about the other having no brains. My dad isn’t really like this with anyone but Denny, and it made me smile. We ate enough to feed an elementary school and then went back to his apartment. My dad suggested we pray before I left to drive home. This sort of thing would usually make my skin crawl, but it seemed natural at the moment. My dad and I prayed, our arms around Uncle Denny, and asked for his comfort, for peace, for his ongoing encouragement to those around him. He has been in the same church for thirty years, the church I grew up in until we hopped into an RV to move to Florida when I was seven, and is (to use a term that always make me squirm but seems appropriate here) a blessing to his fellow churchgoers.

My uncle was, to my knowledge, my only living relative on my dad’s side. There was a great aunt from northern Michigan I met when my grandmother died fifteen years ago, but I have never heard from her again and I assume she is dead now. I have about a dozen relatives on my mom’s side and have not seen or communicated with any of them since our wedding nine years ago. It was something of a shock marrying Lyndie and inheriting a family tree that literally numbers thousands. My dad and I are the last two Nilsen men.

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When my dad’s mom died of cancer in our house when I was thirteen we planned her funeral as a celebration. She was the only Christian among all our relatives, and her memorial service was planned, like everything else in my parents’ world, as an evangalistic event. We met in a small chapel in Detroit before a few dozen people and our family shared the Gospel. Each of us – my parents and my sister and I – were going to share. My dad preached, my mom talked, my sister sang a song (which seemed like cheating), and as I climbed the steps to the old pulpit, not a year into puberty, I thought through the carefully prepared words about peace and joy I had worked on during the car drive to the city. I opened my mouth, got out half a sentance, and burst into tears. All my good Christian joy evaporated as I looked down at my grandmother in a small urn on the altar. There was nothing at that moment to have peace about, regardless of what I believed.

I pulled it together and choked out what I had prepared and sat down in the pew beside my family. I wiped my eyes and breathed deep and felt better. Everyone is entitled to a good cry at these times, though I hadn’t aimed to have mine in front of a bunch of grown-ups I didn’t know. After the service the elderly pastor of the church came up to me with a quavering voice and said, “Good speech, son.”

Uncle Denny and my sister at my wedding in 2002. I repeat: dry cleaned.

When I heard my uncle was dead I didn’t cry. I knew it was coming and accepted it in a way I couldn’t at thirteen. And I knew that Denny was at peace, in a place without pain where I trust our poor decisions do not haunt us into eternity. I believe love wins, at least more often than many do, and while you and I may disagree on the extent of that, we can take comfort in knowing both our definitions cover my uncle. He loved Jesus. He looked forward to seeing Him soon. I went to the Easter service Sunday morning and smiled as I thought about him, rocking out in heaven in his best flannel and jeans, and his giant flip-up sunglasses.

 

When I walked out his apartment door last month I told him I would try to make it up to see him again this summer. “If I’m still around,” he said. “If you aren’t, I’ll see you again anyway. How does that sound?” He looked up at me and his warm smile spread across his worn face. “I like the sound of that,” and he laughed.

I’m glad to have seen you one last time, Uncle Denny. Peace of Christ to you, which I’m sure means something much different where you are than it does here. I look forward to seeing you again.

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