Endplay

"It was my Uncle George who discovered that alcohol was a food well in advance of modern medical thought." - P.G. Wodehouse

Back in Sydney after a few weeks in India.  The pattern of my visits has been similar over the past few years perhaps because more than one visit has been precipitated by a family crisis. The same checkered pattern of the city seen from the air, the same mosaic of apartments, trees, shops that flash past as we make trips around the suburbs, the catching up with family, the random rushed visit to meet the odd friend or visit another town.  This time was no different though a shade of exhaustion has crept in with this repetitive pattern.

I knew my uncle well, I didn't know him at all.  Perhaps this can be said of so many people we hold dear.  People we know are familiar, most often we don't even question the degree of attachment we feel for them.  Then suddenly they are not there and the world is a different place.  It eventually resumes its sameness but this sameness is subtly marked, changed. 

The funeral pyre singes those who stand around.  But where the flame is at its highest it is perhaps purer and calmer, mingling with the air of those who have already gone.  I think this of my uncle and his siblings who are no longer there. Then again my uncle was a restless man who always returned home.  In the past few weeks, on some days I have seen him contemplative and hunched in a washed out, rainy corner of the house.  A cigarette as ever is perched in his mouth and he is as enigmatic, remote and dear in death as in life.