My mother’s youngest brother died yesterday and I’m heart broken. Uncle Johnny was one of those rare free spirits we all loved. I always thought of him as my fairy god-uncle. He would flit in and out of our lives, spreading fairy dust in his wake. We rarely saw him but when we did it was magic. I remember when I was little he showed up on our doorstep just before a hurricane hit. To me it seemed like the wind blew him in just like Dorothy. It was magical to a four year old. During that same visit, my sister accidently dropped the cigarettes she was hiding in front of him. She thought for sure that she was busted. Instead he bought her a pack of cigarettes. Now that’s a cool uncle. (Okay, that was before we knew that cigarettes were bad for us.) He was the artist in the family and I like to think that some of his fairy dust made me an artist as well.
I was lucky to have wonderful aunts and uncles on both sides of my family. Johnny was the free spirit, Bobby was always there—our rock of Gibraltar. Unfortunately, Leslie died when I was young so I never met him, but my mom talked of him often. Flo owned a pub. How cool was that. I just loved that I had an English aunt that owned a pub. Nicky was a pistol, mom said she was the daring one of the bunch. I saw that the one time that I met her. Some still lived over in England so I didn’t see them often. Two of them Bobby and Johnny followed my mother to Canada. I can’t imagine what my life would have been like without them in my life.
But it’s more than Uncle Johnny’s leaving us; I’m mourning what was the Bulbrooks. He was the last of my grandparent’s children. (There are two half-sisters from my grandfather’s second marriage but they were born much later.) I grew up on stories of the Bulbrook sibling’s during the depression and the war. To me they were my heroes. I was told that they were the lucky ones because grandfather had a job during the depression. He was “Bob the Gasman.” They had parties at their house all the time. They were a very lively family, all party animals! Then they had to scatter all over during the war. Johnny and Bobby were sent out in the country, away from London, for safety. I can’t imagine leaving your home to go live with strangers knowing that you may not have a family to come home to. Johnny was only 11 when he had to leave. Bobby was a little older and enlisted in the Navy before the war was over. Doris was a nurse and worked in the burn wards. How hard that must have been for an 18 year old. Later, after the war Johnny went into the military and then the merchant marines. I know that the war must have been hard on my grandmother; there were many days that she didn’t know where her children were or whether they were safe.
And now they’re all gone. As my sister said, Nana now has all her children with her. Now it’s up to us, the cousins, to carry on the stories. It’s our duty that our parent’s stories are not forgotten by the next generation. The Bulbrooks will carry on.
