Here We Go Again
My family always tells the story about the day Uncle Josh just showed up. It's part of the family lore and something that has always set us apart.
And, as my mother likes to tell it, leaning forward with an air of mystery and intrigue, "Not at the door. In my bed!"
Which probably would have been a scandal if Uncle Josh had been older or Mom had been in the bed at the time.
But, ever since I was born, I have heard this story. Uncle Josh, the man I was named for, appeared one day in Mom's bed and was only discovered while they were moving into this house where we were having the wake for his death. Grandpa and his brother, Great Uncle Harry, had brought up the bed for Mom and they were bringing up the bed for her sister, Aunt Hilary. And there was Uncle Josh, asleep in Mom’s bed when they got back into the room.
"Grandpa was so confused. So was Uncle Josh," the story always inevitably went.
It was being told over and over this particular weekend as Uncle Josh had passed away. The family had gathered from the four corners of the country and every person Uncle Josh had known in his lifetime were nearby, hearing how he had entered our family 50 years ago.
He looked to be about 13 years old, my age, when they found him in the bed.
"It was the weirdest thing ever," Grandma always said, wringing her hands in her lap where she clutched the tissue she'd been simultaneously wiping her nose and eyes with.
We had expected Uncle Josh to die because he had a nasty cancer that lasted a long time. We were prepared but it was still sad. I really liked the fact that we were celebrating his life instead of having a really sad time together. Instead we had fun music playing and all the food was brought by the family. All of Uncle Josh's favorites. Uncle Josh had good taste because I loved all of it and I spent most of the day wandering between family and friend groups, picking at the food and eating so much I was almost sick by the end of it because no one had paid enough attention to what I was doing to stop me.
Uncle Josh hadn’t known what was happening the day he showed up. The day they moved. There was almost no way, as Grandpa Jack tells it, that Uncle Josh could have gotten into the house while he and Great Uncle Harry were going back down to bring up Aunt Hilary’s bed. So they always assumed he had been in the house before they got there.
“It was the funniest thing,” Aunt Hilary recalls with the same grin on her face. “He looked so familiar that Grandpa thought maybe Uncle Danny or Uncle Kyle had brought one of their friends alone. Sneaked ‘em in!”
Mom always nods her head; they tell the story best in tandem. “Yep. He was so mad. You should’ve seen how red his face was. Because we’d all been kind of in a chaos between the cars and, because there were nine of us kids, it had been crazy.”
Aunt Hilary always giggles. “Daddy was sure he hadn’t paid for extra food on the road but it was hard to tell because we had Grandma June with us and her sister April too. Just to help. You know. Mom was so in over her head with that move!”
Grandma laughs and nods along with them. The story is even better when Grandma joins the tale. When Grandpa Jack was still alive, the tale rose to harrowing heights of ridiculousness and most of that, according to Grandma, was lies. I don’t remember his parts really. I just remember his face as he told the story about waking Uncle Josh up.
“Dad always said,” Aunt Hilary goes on, lowering her voice to sound like Grandpa Jack, “‘I dropped your bed, Hilary, that’s why there was that big dent in the floor and the scratch on the leg. Dropped it almost on my own foot. I was ready to give your Uncle Kyle a punch in the nose. Because I was sure I had seen that kid somewhere before. Had to be one of the gaggle of kids he always brought over.’”
“But no!” Mom says, adding it in quick like getting that punchline in before Aunt Hilary is a competition. Maybe it is. I don’t know. It’s funny.
“No, indeed!” Grandma adds, triumphantly usurping even Mom’s victory. “No, we found out soon enough that Josh was orphaned. So sad. He didn’t seem like he remembered much and we never could get him to tell us the truth about where he came from.”
Mom shakes her head and captures me as I pass, pulling me into her arms against her. “He was your age, Joshy. I can’t imagine losing you and never seeing you again.”
Grandma looked so sad. “I couldn’t imagine losing your Uncle Josh either once we adopted him.”
Uncle Josh apparently became a fast addition to the family. They wrapped him up, the more the merrier, with all the other kids. Grandpa Jack had always added in that he thought everything was “Cheaper by the dozen anyway, right, Sal?”
“‘That’s right, Jack,’ I always told him,” Grandma says with a little sniffle. “I will really miss Josh. What are we going to do without him?”
Grandma starts crying in earnest then and Mom lets me go so that she and Aunt Hilary can gather around her to comfort her. I don’t know what it’s like to lose a child or for one of them to die but it seems like Grandma has had to deal with a lot of that. There are only 4 remaining children from her “gaggle” of children, Uncle Josh included.
I wander away and grab a third piece of pecan pie even though I already have a stomach ache brewing. I’ve had enough socializing and hearing the stories about Uncle Josh.
He was a great guy and always seemed to like me a lot. He used to joke that I shouldn’t eat so much just because no one was watching. It was definitely a thing I did at all the wakes I went to for my aunts and uncles and Grandpa Jack too. Uncle Josh also left me quite a bit of money in his will which surprised a lot of people. But Mom says it’s because I am the youngest of the grandkids and the only one still in the area.
Uncle Josh and I formed a great bond and I learned a lot from him. To tell the truth, even though I am happy we’re celebrating his life instead of having a really sad thing like we did for my Uncle Kyle because his wife, Aunt Celia, insisted and couldn’t stop crying, I miss Uncle Josh so much it hurts.
So, I take myself upstairs. Away from the food. Away from the music. Away from the stories and the memories on repeat downstairs with the family. It’s Grandma’s house but we’re staying here with her now that Grandpa Jack is gone and Mom is going through the sadness of divorce from Dad. It’s good for everyone and I had loved being so close to Uncle Josh who never moved out of the neighborhood. His house was next door and the For Sale sign on the lawn was depressing.
I slip into the room I’ve been staying in while we stay with Grandma. It’s Mom’s and Aunt Hilary’s old room. I walk to the old bed and touch the scratch on the leg. I feel somehow a lot closer to Uncle Josh knowing that he was the reason for the scratches. That was part of the story I hadn’t remembered before today. I lay down on the other bed, Mom’s old bed, and wrap myself in the blankets. I know they aren’t the same ones that Uncle Josh woke up in, but it helps anyway.
I think I am crying. I don’t reach up to feel if there are tears but I do know that sadness is filling me up from the inside out and my stomach hurts a lot. I’m so tired that I just rest here. Mom will come get me if they want me for anything. They probably won’t. I’m just a kid. They won’t miss me. Not in the shadow of Uncle Josh.
----
I wake up sometime later to an incredibly loud bang. I am startled so hard that I cannot speak immediately and it takes me a moment before I realize that there are people in my room. They are talking in hushed voices.
I stir then and try to peek around the covers, wondering if Aunt Kelly is drunk again and needs the other bed to lie down in until she can call an Uber home. But I don’t see Aunt Kelly.
I do see two men with bright red hair and very confused expressions.
“Son, where are you supposed to be?” one of them asks.
Where am I supposed to be? I want to smartly ask where they are supposed to be because it isn’t here in my room. Instead I clear my throat and the other man starts speaking.
“You’d better go get Sal, have her figure out which one of the kids sneaked their friend three thousand miles across the country with us. That’s going to be a really fun conversation to have with his parents.”
I frowned and sat up, pushing the covers aside and shaking my head.
“This is my grandma’s house. Who are you?” I demand.
The first man rubs his head like he has a headache. The gesture is so familiar that I feel sicker to my stomach than when I fell asleep. Grandpa Jack used to do that.
I’m 13 but I have read a lot of books (many of them sci-fi given to me by Uncle Josh) and I am smart enough to put two and two together to make four. I have a very sinking feeling that I know what is happening.
“Uh, I’m Jack, this is my brother Harry…”
Which confirmed it. Even as young Grandpa Jack talked, I knew what was happening. Uncle Josh, in his own way, had been trying to prepare me. I think, this time around, he and I, we were going to have a better, easier go. Maybe this time I wouldn’t die young or next door to my adopted mother, Grandma Sally, but make money and go on adventures instead.
I take a deep breath and give them the story I made up long ago when I first wondered what I would do if I just appeared somewhere like Uncle Josh did. It’s a whopper but it’s plausible.
Here we go again.