This is How We Should Love: My Eulogy for Uncle John

In grief, I find hope

The first and best inside joke of my life, a love note buried with my favorite uncle in the deep South. Photo by author.

Clanton, Alabama
June 21, 2024

I sat down to write this a dozen times, and found my thoughts bouncing so quick and strong I wasn’t able to catch any of them. I thought about poetry and eulogies and memories and grief, but in the end my heart and mind kept returning to one thing — love.

I haven’t been in Alabama for over 20 years, but somehow when we crossed state lines from Georgia, a weight settled in my gut, like something deep inside me was stretching toward my roots. I don’t remember feeling this way when I was younger, and I’m not sure if it’s attached to the occasion or stories and memories or the certainty that developed this January in my soul that family and love and our histories and futures are precious and important and fleeting.

I came here from the evergreen state, but we don’t have green like the deep south. Verdant, vine-rich, and stunningly bright, and I can’t think of anything but how fitting it is because that’s what Uncle John was for me.

Every truth has its versions and every life its struggles. Your point of view is one possible gospel and this is mine. My memories of him are lively and full of wonder. The first set are mostly from holidays at Grandmom’s, full of laughter…