Happy Birthday Uncle Jim

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

7:30 PM - Happy Birthday Uncle Jim
Current mood: cold
Category: Life


My mom had one sibling. A brother named J R. I called him Uncle Jim. Friends, neighbors, and all our other relatives knew him as "Thumper."

I remember a fun man. Again, not many memories of my childhood remain. I remember getting a matching set of Pound Puppy Puppies from him for my birthday one year. A boy and a girl puppy with a blue and a pink collar. I still have the girl puppy, although I have no clue how or when I lost the boy puppy.

I remember his brown hair and his blue eyes and sitting around my grandparents table in my pajamas while he came in ate (usually a lot later than the rest of us).

I remember a very tall man (of course, I was only 3 feet tall at the time, so everyone was tall to me - lol).

Thumper always seemed to be working somewhere on something. Being a child I never was told the specifics. There were times I knew he'd been gone for months and then he'd just appear out of my childhood nowhere.

Thumper passed away in an accident at work on August 15, 1994 while working on the hydroelectric plant outside of Twin Falls, Idaho. Just shy of his 33rd birthday. He would have been 46 today. I still have a hard time visiting Twin Falls, despite the fact that my Jim spent most of last summer working there. It's a bitter sweet visit. A place where I feel at peace with the world around me, content in the arms of the man I love, and yet a sad reminder of a man I never really got to know.