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     Buddy
                                                                       

  My uncle died a few weeks back.  He was my mother's oldest brother.  His given name was John Hawks, Jr.  We all knew him as Buddy, a moniker he was given because one of his baby sisters could not quite pronounce "brother" and it came out sounding like "budda," so the name stuck.  

  As long as I can remember, he has worked with his wife in a restaurant she owned.  She took care of business up front and he took care of the kitchen.  They ran a place in Nashville, TN for many years called "The Knife and Fork" that was fairly successful.  Somewhere in my mother's vast collection of photos there exists a print of me standing under the sign in front of that restaurant.  I was could not have been more than ten years old, but I remember certain moments during that visit quite vividly.  Buddy let me come back in the kitchen and hang out with him while he worked one morning.   At one point he was preparing to cut a fresh apple pie into several slices, and I watched with intrigue as he worked the large knife across the sharpening steel, his hands moving so fast I was sure he was going to lose a finger before it was over.   He observed  my intense interest  and proceeded to explain to me how the process worked, before allowing me the great privilege of taking a few strokes across the steel myself.   I got quite a thrill out of handling that knife.   I felt like I had been accepted as an equal, not just some kid, at least for a few moments.   

  He was a fairly animated individual, always ready with a story to spin, and had an easy, comfortable way about him.   His wife Ada, one half of a set of twin sisters, was even more animated than he was, a bundle of energy that could not be contained.  She was always on the move, always talking, and usually pretty entertaining.  They made a good couple.  I saw a really great picture of them recently. They were both very young in the photo.  They must not have been dating long  at that time.   Buddy is sitting on a couch in someone's living room and Ada is snuggled up next to him, the curve of her body fitting perfectly into his, her head leaned over on his shoulder.  His arm is laying across the back of the couch and his hand is resting comfortably on her shoulder.  They look so content in that photograph, so happy, and so full of promise for a future together.  The photo brought a smile to my face, even though I was standing next to Buddy's casket at the time.  I saw the beginning of their life together while at the same time bearing witness to the end of that partnership.  They loved each other their whole lives.   No matter what life through at them, not matter what bad choices were made, no matter how much one or the other abused their health, at the end of the day they loved each other, and that never changed.

  The photograph at the top of this page was taken in Chicago during the late fifties.  I ran across it among several boxes of old photos at my mother's about a year or so ago.  I had never seen it before, nor had I ever heard mention of Buddy working at a lunch counter while the family was living up there.  I had heard my mother talk a few times about her family living there when she was in high school, but those stories consisted mostly of tales her interaction with her classmates or her father's adventures at work or on the train, so when I saw this photo, I was intrigued.  I began to wonder what Buddy was like back then.  

  I love this photograph simply for its composition and the way it captures so perfectly a moment in time.  The two men bent over the counter focus only on their meals, lost in their own respective worlds, as the man behind the counter stares off into the distance, taking advantage of the fact that their are few customers, finding his own muse.  In this case the man behind the counter happens to be my uncle, a man I would not be able to even remember for almost another twenty years.  I wonder what he is thinking at that exact moment.  Is he lost in the past or contemplating the future?  Does he have any idea what path his life will take?  Is he simply caught up in the banality of the present, watching the clock and waiting for his shift to be over so that he can go out and raise a little hell?  What was he like then, would I have liked him?  Would I have wanted to punch him right in the mouth?  I am full of questions that can never be answered, and this photo only begs more.

  Buddy is caught in a moment forever here, between past and present when anything and everything is possible and hinges on making a choice.  He made a choice that brought him to another choice, and then another, and another, until I came to know him as my uncle.  Had he chosen another path at that point, who knows what would have become of him?  What alternate life would he have lived?  Would he have been fulfilled or would that other lifeline eventually led to the same end as the one he chose?  I wonder about these things.  Is there such as a thing as fate?  Are there any wrong choices, or is the act of making choice all that is required?  Are we all meant to end up in a predestined future regardless of the choices we make?  I don't know.  None of us do.  Thus is the enigma of life itself.

  Goodbye Buddy.  You have led an interesting life.