This post may go too far, but I've had a really bad day, and I feel like expressing it.
Last year, two of my uncles passed away. Raymond and Redmond. I only realized later how similar their names were, even though they could not have been more different.
Redmond was well educated. A quiet, reserved teacher with a great sense of humor. A man whom when he died the only word that I could think of was "good". Always full of life, when he suffered a debilitating stroke, it felt like all that humanity was trapped. But a love of life still remained. He had difficulty talking but could still express his every emotion. When my dad died, Redmond and his brother Greg became as close to a surrogate father as my brother and I had, even while their sisters disowned us.
Raymond was not known to be educated, even though it turned out he graduated from the Nova Scotia Agricultural College as a meat cutter . . . making him posthumously an alumnus of Dalhousie University. Raymond had a hearing disorder that resulted in him having difficulty talking. To be honest, I was always scared to talk to him, because I could never understand him. But for all the comments on Raymond's intelligence . . . jokes or not . . . I truly believe him to be one of the most intelligent men that I have ever known. Raymond knew what was important. He drank and smoked until the day he died. While all who knew him told him that it would catch up to him, Raymond lived himself to death. He never harmed a soul, but he knew that we only live life once. And when he left, he left without a regret.
I can only hope that when I die, I die half the man of either of my uncles.
