Uncle John

Psalm 119:120
My flesh trembles for fear of You,
And I am afraid of Your judgments.

Is there anyone you were afraid to make mad?  My Uncle John was that person.  He was a fun-loving guy who always tried hard to make our times together memorable and usually did, even without trying.  I have more stories that make my family laugh than you can shake a stick at. John had a way of seeing the world that no other person could.  I always considered his humor what my son's humor is now.

When my Grandma, Uncle John and Uncle Bob all came in to have a graveside service after that passing of my Grandfather, I made him really mad.  He eventually got over it, but I knew then that having him upset with me was not something I wanted to happen often.

Our shower in our house was down in the basement.  Thirteen narrow steps.  No one was home except my sister, my grandmother and me, and Grandma wanted to take a shower.  So Sue and I put Grandma between us and we slowly inched down the steps, slowly, because Grandma's knees were awful and it was a lot of strain.  She could have fell and broken something.  But we made her go slow.  We were there going down and coming up.  At the time, it wasn't that big of a deal.  We were teenagers and we knew we had to keep her safe.  When the rest of the family got home, I guess Grandma told them that she took a shower.  John, being the hot-head, jumped all over us.  He listed all of the things that could have went wrong, he yelled and then he left.  I talked to my parents about it, and my dad tried to explain how John felt responsible for Grandma, more so than the rest of us.  I was most upset that I had upset John.  But dad apparently went and talked to John, trying to explain that we were careful, Grandma was fine and that he needed to chill.  And somewhere in the rest of that week, he tried to apologize.  His apologies were kind of, take what you can get and just let it all go.  And that's what we did.