Requiem for Uncle Bob, Part II

Uncle Bob took great pride in being a curmudgeon, in expressing total contempt for everything that might even smack of sentimentality. He was on occasion too good at it, and his unwillingness to suffer what he saw as stupidity could often border on hurtfulness. Yet his capacity for love and goodness for those close to him was boundless.

For many years, he wrote a column for his local newspaper, the Atascadero (California) News, which totally belied the face he liked to present to the world. It was called “The Sunny Side,” and I am sure the paper will not mind if I present his final column below:

The time has come to say farewell—while it is still possible.

It’s been such fun these past 13 or 14 years, since Lori got me started on this every-Fridayessay, or column, or whatever-you may call it, in an attempt to balance out the Letters page—that is, to point out all the wonderful, beautiful, happy-making things around us “On the Sunny Side of the Street.”

Stevenson wrote: “The world is full of such a number of things. I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings!” Well, as Kipling wrote, “The captains and the king depart,” but we are still here—until our time runs out. There will always be spring flowers out by Steel Creek, and the beautiful, winding, climbing roads of our county, and Black Mountain out past Pozo, lifting its lordly beauty, with its calm and silence.

There will always be an annual crop of children, full of curiosity and joy—sharing all their exciting discoveries with us, as we once shared with our grandparents. What delights they are, and we must strive to see that the world they grow up in will be even better than the one our parents built for us.

In due season will come the breezes and the winds, the black clouds or the fleecy clouds of purest white. The trees and bushes will bud and leaf out and blossom, and flowers will pop out of the ground, seemingly overnight. The birds will come back and my favorite mockingbird, Moxie, will sing his heart out under the moons of spring and there’ll be Moxie XVIII before we can blink!

In its season will come rain, but nothing, in our part of the world, will rule us as will the sun—and its “Cooker Days.” And so the grapes ripen, “to make glad the hearts of man.” And this old earth turns and our solar system does, too, and our galaxy goes spinning through space—a tiny dot in the vastness of the unknown.

So let’s do the best we can, while we can, and smile oftener than we groan, and chuckle more than we sigh, and look on the sunny side…and so, goodbye.

Goodbye, Uncle Bob.

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This blog is from Dorien's ebook of blogs, Short Circuits, available from UntreedReads.com and Amazon.com; it's also available as an audio book from Amazon/Audible.com. You can find information about Dorien's books at his web site:  www.doriengrey.com: