Small Town Therapist on Death of a Very Dear Uncle

Patrick and sister Jane in @ 1960

As the future rolls by into the past, we all long to know what lies ahead, what we can expect. Ironically, the future can be known...by sagaciously studying the past.                                 J. Patrick McHenry from his book  A Short History of  Mexico

Uncle Patrick @ 1982

We all adored our Uncle Patrick, our mother's youngest brother. He was handsome, sophisticated, kind, multitalented and exotic to us his young nephew and nieces. We didn't get to see him very often as he lived in Mexico in the 1950's until the 1970's. He worked as a free lance artist, a bookseller and manager of Libreria Britanica. He was a soldier in WWll as an Air Corps radio man. Patrick taught at the American Institute of Cultural Relations in Mexico City.

The reason that I feel compelled to tell his story is I came across an old journal and I'd written a prose/ poem about Pat when we visited him in the assisted living facility in 1998.

Meet Patrick McHenry

All jutting bones, blue skin, stubble and a cut lip, blood on his finger tip---unaware of his hurt.

We come slowly into focus: four singing sisters, his nieces, bringing a piece of his past, we hope to jolt the Swiss Cheese that's become his brain.

So tentatively he rises up and engages each of us with his sad blueberry eyes.

Now lost in those eyes glimmered a man who:

studied at the Sorbonne, graduated in science from Northwestern University, taught himself piano and travelled extensively in Europe. 

He became an ex-patriot in Mexico:

 painted murals, met the president and wrote A Short History of Mexico, travelled all over Mexico with the American Book company. 

Pat loved what he did and who he was in Mexico, but his mother, our grandmother, fell ill, he felt compelled to return to Chicago. 

Pat lived on his own in a small apartment in Chicago:

studied Gurjieff, Buddism, returned to the Catholic Church and sang in the choir. 

In 1996 our mother remarried and moved to the Milwaukee area. Mom threw a big celebratory party and invited all the relatives from many states, old friends from Chicago area and all our cousins and us kids. 

Pat, along with his brother our Uncle Rob were planning to come to Mom's house for the celebration. Rob had flown in from California and then proceeded to lose his rental car somewhere in Chicago. Ultimately his son Mike had to fly out from California to salvage the trip and to drive his father and his Uncle to Mom's party. It was then we all noticed how drastically Pat and Rob had declined.

The march itself was like one long dreadful nightmare from which no one could awake.                                                                                                                      J Patrick McHenry from his book on Mexico about the Cortes March in 1524

There was no question, Patrick was no longer capable of living by himself. Fortuitously my mother stepped up and helped her failing brother and put Patrick in an assistant living facility in Milwaukee near to where she lived. For us, the sisters this was great because when we visited Mom we were lucky enough to have some time with Pat as well.  At the time we visited Uncle Pat, we had to remind him who we were---he almost knew. 

We picked up his stick arms and shuffle with him down the hallway as fragments of sentences would come to him. At last sister Kathleen took hold of his bony hand in hers, then haze clears and Uncle Patrick looks up and says, " the best days are hand holding days".  Tenderly we help him into the urine soaked chair in his room and bid him goodbye. As we're leaving a beautiful young Hispanic nurse comes to tend him. She smiles and says, "Mr. McHenry responds best when I speak to him in Spanish." We should have known. 

Dementia robbed him of his mind but not his kind heart or his gentlemanly demeanor. 

Our heels click on the floors like castanets as we waltz down the halls in our healthy bodies. 

That was the last time I saw him, it turned out to be the last year of his life. Soon after our visit it wasn't long before he died.

We of the vibrant minds, healthy bodies and the quickened pace, rarely brave the study of  the care worn face.

Cowards in the day time, we block off their pain--- omitting their confusion as we go on our way again. Forgetting life's frailty, back to our tentative stability, reality--- afraid to ask 'who's next'?

Patrick and sister Jane in Mexico 1960

Remember:

The best days are hand holding days.                     J. Patrick McHenry

As the future rolls by into the past, we all long to know what lies ahead, what we can expect. Ironically, the future can be known...by sagaciously studying the past.                                 J. Patrick McHenry

susansmagicfeather 2022 Susan R. Grout