Uncle Walter's Poems
I have a collection of homemade books my mom gave to me. They are books of poems written by a man who lives in the same nursing home my great aunt Harriet lives in. The man's name is Terry, but he calls himself Uncle Walter for the purpose of these books, because he thinks it makes him sound more benevolent.
I'm not sure if I should be using the present tense or not; when my mom gave me the books a year or so ago, she told me Uncle Walter was terminally ill. I've never met the man, and I suppose if I had to guess I'd say he may have passed on.
I kept the books for a year or so and didn't really look at them. They ended up in a stack of other items, then in the toybox, where they spent many months in obscurity. A couple weeks ago I pulled them out and looked at the crude computer drawings and read some of the poems, which are simple and written for kids. He talks about why kids shouldn't be scared of the world, why God is on their side, that sort of thing. I skipped right to end of the last book and read the final page:
This is my last book. I don't know if (Lord willing) I will live to complete it. (I am terminally ill.) I am spending my last days working on my books.
Do you feel lost and alone? Are you sad or troubled about life? Do you feel that no one loves you or understands you? Does your family love you but something is missing in your life--an empty hole inside that needs to be filled? Are you facing failure or even staring death in the face and there is no way to fix or cure your problems? Do you no longer have anything to offer? Have you hit rock bottom with no way to go up again? Have you lost all hope for the future? I too have felt some of these things and have found an answer to them in Jesus Christ.
I'm not a person of faith, but I've never faced what Uncle Walter describes above, either. There is so much I don't like about what is done today in the name of religion and God, but I'm not going to sit here and say God didn't make an impact on this man's life. If Uncle Walter says God gave him hope, then God gave him hope. I suspect writing the poems helped a bit, too.
At the end of the book there are some photos of Uncle Walter, a middle-aged man with long hair. He looked strong in the photos, and he was surrounded by people he had worked with over the years. There were also photos of the area around where he had lived, by Alma, Kansas. Pictures of creeks, open fields, trees. Nothing showy, but places I felt I knew well, right out of the Flint Hills of Kansas. I was touched that he put those pictures in there, but I'm not sure I can explain why. I suppose I figured a book I would write while I faced my own death might have pictures that looked very much like the ones Uncle Walter had in his book.
I struggled with what to do with the books. They were voluminous, to say the least. I didn't know the man. Were my copies the only ones? Did I have Uncle Walter's only lifeline in my hands, the singular output of his hope and passion as his life wound down? Even now as I type this, I hesitate to tell you the truth of what I did with the books, and regret that I did it, but it's done now, save for the last three pages I saved with his photo and the excerpt I printed above: I threw the books away. Well, I recycled them. What was I going to do with all these pages of copy paper held together with brass fasteners? We had too much stuff laying around everywhere, and Uncle Walter's Poems got caught up in a massive purge of useless paper, old toys and other accumulated mess. I read the last pages, ripped them out because I knew I wanted to write something about this man, and told myself I wouldn't look back.
Now I'm looking back. Uncle Walter, if you're still with us, please make sure somebody else has a copy of your poems. But even if, God forbid, I had the only copy, and you have moved on from this Earth, at least know that someone read some of what you wrote and understood that a man from Kansas faced his last days with dignity and the hope that he could help others.
8:17:43 PM 
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