Ernest, Paul to everyone that knew him, Lounsbury, after suffering deteriorating health these past few months, died on December 16, 2003.  I can scarcely believe I’ve written this sentence.  It’s God’s mercy, I suppose, that he suffers no longer.  But for those of us left behind, the family and friends able to share in his life, there’s a sudden void and a painful grieving process that has now just begun.

He was just a man.  He had his time in this world and that time, 78 years worth, has ended.  I suppose the word “ordinary” comes to mind when describing him.  Ordinary at least in the sense that his name isn’t recorded in any history books, his portrait doesn’t hang in any esteemed halls, and his accomplishments will never be taught to others outside the circle of those who knew him.  The memory of Paul Lounsbury will fade as the generations pass until he becomes just another name in a family tree, a life reduced to a couple of words and a few dates.

And that’s a shame.  Everyone has their opinions, makes their own judgments, and formulates their own ideas of exactly what constitutes a good life and a good man.  Though I can’t speak for others, in my view, Uncle Paul, as I’ve known him my entire life, was a very good man.  One that lived his life the way it ought to be lived, with genuine caring, true honor and calm dignity.

He was the kind of man that was there, a quiet presence felt.  He said little, worked hard and smiled quickly.  I don’t recall him ever asking more of life than he was willing to put into it.  I cannot think of a single time he didn’t help out someone that needed it.  I don’t think he had a lot of money, but he certainly had a lot of heart and he shared that readily.  He had wit, generosity and character.  It all made him very easy to like. 

We were close, but not so much in the individual sense.  Him being my father’s older brother, the bond between them naturally carried through into my generation.  Some of my earliest memories involve our family and theirs.  There was all the picnics and holidays we shared, all the fishing trips we went on together, deer hunting when I was finally old enough to join the men in this fall ritual, summers cutting wood by the cord to stave off winter’s chill.  And most particularly the weekly card games the adults would play as I and my cousin wolfed down my Aunt Lois’s delicious, homemade, and I do mean completely homemade, pizza, a real treat in the days before a pizzeria could be found on every corner

I can recall netting bait from the ponds on his farm.  He and my father, both big men, dragging the long nets through the autumn-cooled water, their muscles bulging as they heaved them, full of wiggling, agitated shiners, on the banks for us kids to scoop up into buckets.  Shiners that would hopefully bring in big Northern Pike plucked from the frozen St. Lawrence River in the dead of winter.

There were the cold evenings my cousin and I ran through the woods gathering sap and dumping it into the tank my uncle slowly towed along the road toward the sap house.  The sap house itself is a pleasant memory with the warmth and light of its fire, the sweet smell of the boiling sap and the low voices of the men telling stories carried on cigarette smoke as it mingled with the wisps of steam curling toward the rafters.  My uncle made maple syrup using what I’m sure was a divinely inspired process.  Or maybe it was having a hand in the making that made the difference.  Either way it was just so good. 

I remember the two Japanese rifles that fascinated us kids as they rusted away in his basement.  One had a long, still razor sharp after all those years, bayonet on it.  They were mementos of his time in the South Pacific during WWII.  It was a part of his life I dearly wished to hear about but like so many others of his experience, he didn’t wish to speak of.  I know he was in the Navy then and had been decorated. I know he’d served on a few ships during this period, one of them the same class as the USS Slater, now docked in Albany.  I know he’d seen combat.  I didn’t know much else.

My parents took him to the Slater not so long ago.  They said he liked being onboard.  Perhaps those tired old feet felt the hard deck and recalled a time when adrenalin had pounded them urgently on similar steel toward battle stations.  I suppose even in the worst of times there are still pleasant memories made, nostalgia has a funny way of twisting such things into bearable and sometimes even fond remembrances.

I have all these memories and thoughts of him and a thousand more.  Right now it seems I can think of nothing else.  I have an equal number of questions I’d like to ask him, but the opportunity for that has now been lost to me.  Death robs us of so very much.

It’s an odd and unsettling feeling to realize a giant of your childhood has somehow become human.  But it’s a good and necessary door to pass through as well.  For it’s only when the myths of infallibility fall away that we’re finally able to truly appreciate all that those erstwhile giants are and what they have done.  When we overcome our fears, stand strong on the outside though we are plagued with doubts on the inside, press on at the times it would be so easy to quit, in short, it’s when our strengths overcome our weaknesses that a person’s true worth shines forth. 

I don’t know when I first looked at my uncle and saw a man.  I’m not aware of the moment, or if there even was one when I realized he was human with all the faults, virtues and other things that take us beyond flesh and blood to give us conscience and soul.  Somehow this realization did come though and I appreciate him and how he lived his life all the more for it.  My uncle’s worth shone brighter than the sun.

We all watched the years take their toll on him.  They say age creeps up on a person.  It’s true.  Each small step down that inevitable path seems so inconsequential as it occurs. We don’t see them or chose not to.  We fool ourselves into thinking nothing has changed.  It’s not that he can’t, it’s just that he doesn’t want to.  But the truth is a light growing ever brighter, at least in this regard.  My uncle’s strength was leaving him and no delusions of mine or anyone else could bring it back.  Time weathers the hardest stone, flesh is much less durable.

Last summer my wife and I took our son to the Slater.  It was the first time any of us had seen it.  We marveled at the conditions the men lived under and all they’d accomplished.  Later that month, during our family reunion I saw my uncle standing outside, alone for the moment and I grabbed the opportunity.  I took my son over to his great-uncle and told him here was a man that had done all we’d been amazed at, that had lived something we could scarcely believe happened. 

My son was polite, but disinterested, or perhaps unbelieving.  He couldn’t look at the frail old man before him and see the young sailor gallantly performing his duty so far from home even as his heart filled with fear and his eyes with terror while death lashed out indiscriminately around him.  He didn’t see the man that’d come back from the war to raise a family by pouring sweat into the ground on the family farm and then working the forests in backbreaking and dangerous labor for EnCon after that. 

My son didn’t understand how brightly the spirit of his great-uncle still burned within the shell his body had become even as it wore out and shut down.  He couldn’t know any of it, and I didn’t know how to show it to him.  He’s too young and WWII too distant for him to appreciate all that The Greatest Generation, as Tom Brokaw put it, endured.  Someday, when he’s older, I hope that changes.

He asked a few quick questions.  My uncle mumbled some replies making light of his experiences, as was his way.  An awkward few seconds of silence followed and then my son was off again.  I stayed a few more minutes by my uncle’s side.  We said some things, his voice was so soft by this time it was difficult to understand him, and then I said goodbye.  He smiled at me with that smile I’ve seen ten thousand times before but will never see again.  For the briefest of instants I swear the years fell away and I could see the giant I’d known as a child.  “Every man had his job to do”, he said.  At the time I thought he was speaking of the Navy and the war.  Now I realize it was his parting gift of wisdom to me.  Every man does have his job to do.  It was the last time I ever spoke to him.

He got progressively worse soon after that.  I think life lost much of its few remaining pleasures in those final months although I know from my parents that he remained interested in his family, particularly his grandchildren and his great grandchildren, right up to the end.    He went into the hospital one last time.  Hope’s brave face was unable to hide the facts and we all knew it was unlikely he would ever come out again.  Maybe he knew that as well and because he wasn’t the type of man to linger in a bed, the end soon came.  I think he willed it to happen that way.  In the final page of his life, not even death held sway over him.

What do you call a man who never seeks accolades or recognition?  What do you say about a man who does whatever it takes, time and time and time again, to do the best that he can?  What honors are bestowed upon the man who toils day after day to provide for a family, who raises fine children and who touches so many other lives by his example?  What words describe a man who stands strong and unflinching against the overwhelming winds of fear and the grind of life?  I used the word “ordinary” to describe such a man when I first sat down to write this but right now, for the life of me, I can’t think of a single thing that was ordinary about him.

Paul Lounsbury leaves a wife, Lois and his children, Joel, June and Paul behind.  He leaves his grandchildren and great-grandchildren; he leaves brothers and a sister, in-laws, nieces, nephews and other family.  He leaves friends and neighbors.  I don’t know exactly how many in all mourn this day but I do know this.  Each and every one of us is lessened by his departure from this world.  He will be missed

Rest in peace Uncle Paul, you’ve earned it.