Paper Musings.

I'm seriously tempted to title my paper for Heart of Darkness  Ebony and Irony: The Function of Irony in Heart of Darkness against Belgian Colonialism

Long I know. Pun-tastic I know. But I always like to amuse myself in titles. I may drop the last "Belgian Colonialism" thing and just stick it in my thesis. Oh don't worry, I won't actually do it. It's too cheezy, even for me. I'm not sure if it entirely makes sense in the title. Basically I'm not entirely excited to write this paper. I'm concerned I'll end up repeating myself a lot, but I want to write about irony considering this is a class on British Modernism. Hmm. 

Not the most exciting post, but my life has been a bit dull lately. I've been sick and there's not much to do when one is sick in Oxford. Ho hum. 

The parentals came up Friday night for the hockey game against Northern Michigan. My dad had never been to a hockey game so he was excited. It was a lot of fun. We laughed a lot at the student section. The cheers are hopelessly (how should I put this?) white. Of course, I know full well if I were in the student section I would participate in nearly all of those ridiculous cheers because it's fun. A sort of positive mob-mentality I suppose. All except that horribly racist Indian cheer "paying homage" to the old Redskins mascot. I can't stand that one.

Oh! And I saw the move "She's Just Not That Into You" with my friend Sarah on Sunday. Yes, I tend to fall victim to an indulgent chick-flick now and then. Don't make fun. You know you love them too. And I loved this movie. It was really entertaining and gave me those warm fuzzy feelings that makes chick-flicks so awesome.

I hope all of your lives are far more exciting abroad! I'm currently getting all of my crap together for this summer. The paperwork/loan crap is really obnoxious, but at least I'll be in London in just a few months!

Last one I swear

Since this is mostly a self-indulgent site (considering only Kelsey reads it) I don't feel too guilty having the majority of my blog content be of things regarding the death of my uncle. Buuutttt I do want to move on, and considering that this morning was the funeral this seems to be a pretty good time to do so. So here goes, last post regarding this.

We got to Judy's house last night (recap: Judy is my mom's cousin and both were incredibly close to Uncle. In fact he raised both of them for at least a portion of their life) and stayed the night because the funeral was at 9:00 am the next morning. We talked about my grandma and went through some documents that Uncle had. One of these was the marriage certificate of my great-grandparents (his parents) from 1922. That piece of paper is over 87 years old. How crazy is that? And it's practically in perfect condition. I found out a lot more about my mom's side of the family as well. Apparently there is a cousin Ruth that still lives in Kentucky. That seems crazy to me. I only really thought of Uncle and my grandma as the extent of my family on my mom's side. And apparently my mom went back to visit aunts and uncles in Kentucky with Uncle and my great-grandma Belle. 

I also found out a little more about Uncle's death. Some miracle allowed Uncle to be completely clear and able to speak and be understood right before he died. Judy said that he was crying, balling in her words. He said he just wanted to die. He just wanted to go home. He wanted to go to sleep and wake up home in Kentucky. I guess that's his heaven. Apparently there's a Metcalfe grave plot on a hill in their hometown in Kentucky. Uncle expressed some interest in being buried there while he was on his death bed, but in the end he was buried in Mansfield. According to my grandpa the burial plots in Kentucky are incredibly overgrown and haven't been maintained. 

Funerals are weird. There's the open casket, and he looks almost like a wax statue of himself. Not to mention he had lost a tremendous amount of weight in the hospital. My brother had recorded a video with Uncle about 5 years earlier with a very detailed interview about his life growing up and his experiences in WWII. That was nice to have because he looked and smiled like Uncle in that. It's nice to have that memory of him rather than the memory of him in the hospitals. There were roses that were in a pot that said Uncle on the said. There were about a dozen roses in there. Uncle was an incredible gardener and always had beautiful rosebushes when he was young enough to tend to them. We all lay a rose on his coffin at the burial site. 

He had a military service, which meant TAPS and the 21 gun salute (7 guns fired 3 times). Lee was presented with the flag (Lee is my younger cousin - about 12 - and he and Uncle adored each other) and the empty shells. It was incredibly sad, but I couldn't help thinking "he's finally home. Just like he wanted". So it was difficult to be too sad. 

I almost forgot. I also met some more family. Two of Uncle's cousins came to the funeral: Ken and Ernie Lewis (Lewis was grandma Belle's maiden name). They live in Columbus now, but they were great people. It was really fun meeting them, and especially fun hearing my mom talk about people she knew and places she went that I hadn't even heard of before.

 If interested below is his obituary which has a few more facts than the lifestory  I posted earlier:

Uncle

He's gone

He died this morning. I know that he's better off now. I know that he deserved so much better than the quality of life he had in that hospital. This was what he wanted. I just want to be a little sad right now.

I think I'm going to call my grandmother and tell her. She doesn't pick up for any other family members numbers, but I don't think she has my cell phone number. What terrifies me is that she won't care. He wanted to see her so bad.

He lived a wonderful life. His death wasn't quite worthy of it. But at least he's a bit more free now.

I love you Uncle. You were my uncle growing up. Everyone on my dad's side lived all over the country, but you were there every time I went to see grandma. While you were technically my "great" uncle, you were in some ways more of an uncle to me than anyone else. You were a wonderful, loving man and I will miss you.

--------------------------------------

Apparently one of the reasons Uncle wanted off the respirator was because he wanted to eat again. He's been fed through an IV for months. Well, it was his birthday last Friday (he turned 86) and they got him birthday cake and a good meal. He apparently was talking the entire time about how amazing all the food was. I thought it was so cute and thoughtful that they got him some birthday cake. : )

Howard Metcalfe

That's Uncle's name. Just thought I'd put that in for the records : ) I want to tell his story... at least what I've gathered of his life. It's terribly long, but trying to fit an entire life story into one blog entry is a bit challenging. I wish I'd been able to ask him more about his life. It wasn't until college that I realized how little  I know about him, but here goes.

First though, I've found out a little more about what's going on right now. Apparently Uncle became lucid enough and was able to communicate clearly enough that he did not want to live this way. This was something my mom and her cousin Judy had really struggled with, but when he vocalized his misery they agreed it was time to let him go. He's been removed from his ventilator and they are in the process of finding a place for him in Hospice. My mom guesses they'll just keep him off the ventilator and stop removing the liquid from his lungs. They'll put him on enough medication to keep him comfortable and he'll probably just stop breathing at some point. Now, on to the story.

He was born in the foothills of Appalachia in Nolansburg, Kentucky. He was the oldest and the only boy with two sisters, my grandmother being one of them. His father (Brutis Metcalfe) was an alcoholic and diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but it went untreated. For that, his father couldn't hold a job and they were deathly poor. My great grandma Nancy "Belle" Louis was the only reason they survived. They ate what they could grow... although as you may know Appalachia isn't known for having rich soil. Apparently Brutis' bipolar disorder became dangerous. He would physically and verbally abuse the family, and my Great Aunt mentioned that she had woken up more than once with her dad pointing a gun at her. They all made it through, and Uncle graduated Valedictorian of his high school class.

Here the order and exact details of everything are a little fuzzy. He would have graduated high school around 1941 so my guess is he went into the military before college. In WWII Uncle was part of a special outfit (actually FDR's son was in the same unit as Uncle). It's been explained to me like this: In WWII the US used Navajo to send coded messages, so that even if Japan could decode our messages they would have no idea how to speak Navajo. But Uncle's situation was that say, in a fox hole there would be a marine, a navajo, and one of those communication guys you see in the movies with the box and the phone on their back. I'm obviously not that engrossed in military terms. Anyway, communication guy was my Uncle's role. Apparently if they were ever captured the marine was supposed to shoot and kill the navajo so that the Japanese couldn't learn the language. I don't know how true that is but whatever. From this, Uncle learned quite a bit of Navajo, but I think he lost it over the course of many years. He was also highly valued for his botanical knowledge. From his experiences as a kid he knew exactly what they could and could not eat of what was growing around them. He received many medals throughout WWII, but they weren't very important to him apparently because we have no idea where they are.

From there he went to college. This I have personally asked him about. He loved school. He apparently graduated with far more credit hours than he actually needed. I'm not sure if he went to Miami for undergrad and graduate school or just graduate school. I do know that he even took some summer courses at Kent at some point in his life. But in school he became fluent in both Spanish and French. I believe he did have three different majors: English, Spanish, and French. I forget exactly though. Seriously, he just loved to learn. He got a job at Miami after he graduated. I believe he was a librarian here. He would later teach English courses in the Fairfield school systems. From what Uncle has said, he loved being a teacher. What better job for him than to pass on his passion for learning on to others? Apparently the kids loved him too. They even pitched in and bought Uncle a Fairfield High varsity jacket as a gift. Anyway, he eventually bought a house in Hamilton. His family in Kentucky would come live in Uncle's house until they got a job and earned enough money to live on their own. Uncle was their way out of poverty.

He never married. I don't know if there were any almosts, or marriage just didn't interest him. Later in life Uncle became a pack rat. He would order cheap "collectable" plates that he would never open. He would come home from the grocery store with an entire van full of junk for one person, which of course he would never eat. When I would go over to his house it was kind of like an adventure. There was a path through the piles of junk leading to everywhere. To sit down you had to clear things out. Every time I went over there I would find something I liked and got to keep it as a present. It seemed strange, but didn't bother me. Finally it got to the point where Uncle just couldn't take care of himself and my grandma was exhausted from trying to keep up with him. Uncle would forget to take important medication, or leave a pot on the stove. So we had to move him out and sell the house that had been so important to the family for so many years. That was a job. I helped clean out the garage where there were cases and cases of canned foods that had expired years ago. There were maggots in all of them. Apparently when my grandpa first opened the garage he had found a cat that had gotten trapped in there and died. It was a little gross. All in all it took us several years to clear the house out. 

Now don't get me wrong. He wasn't just a crazy old guy. His spending habits did at least buy him enough insurance that he would have been completely covered in a nursing home as long as he lived. Unfortunately he hasn't quite made it there from the hospital. Oh well. But he was incredibly witty. This lighthearted intelligence continued even to through the first month or so of him being in the hospital. You could always tell when he was joking because he'd get this little smile on his face and his eyes would literally twinkle. They would just light up when he was having fun with you. Uncle was one of the warmest, brightest, and funniest people I have ever met, and I will miss him terribly.

My great uncle is dying.

I just call him Uncle. I don't want any confusion. He's been put into hospice. It's not that I didn't see this coming with problem after problem coming up. He has surgery. He breaks his hip 24 hours later. The heart isn't recovering well from surgery. He goes into respiratory arrest and is revived. He's on a trachea to keep him breathing and has difficulty communicating. This may not be a big deal, but for such an intelligent man it is infuriating. Then he gets an infection in his lungs and has to be quarantined. What was once a predicted to be a few weeks on a trachea turns into months. And so on and so on. Now I suppose he's letting go. All of this crap will finally be over with. Perhaps I should be happy for him. Part of me expected this, but the other part held on to the hope that he would fight through this. He had already survived what would have killed most men his age. Oh well.

I wish he had gotten to go to Washington. There was a program in the area going on in the area to send veterans WWII to DC to see the new memorial and honor them before they all die. Uncle received many medals and was incredibly important to his marines in WWII. He was scheduled to go this spring. 

I wonder how my mother is taking this. He was there for her in the worst of times. During college when my grandfather was drinking, my grandma was crazy, and they were in the midst of a nasty divorce my mom lived with Uncle. When she went "home" from college she went to Uncle's. She calls him Uncle as well, that's probably where I got it from. She's been up to visit him constantly since he was hospitalized. It didn't matter that it was at least a three hour trip and she had to work the next day. She made the round trip in one day just to see him. 

The first time I visited him in the hospital he was still fairly lucid, although couldn't talk. We had to read his lips. One of the first things he asked us was if Faye was coming. Faye is my grandmother and his only living sister. My mom had previously told my uncle that she was back to the angry, paranoid woman she was twenty years before. He seemed to have forgotten and thought she was still sane. I felt so bad. He's asked for her several times since then. He's even thought my mom's cousin Judy WAS Faye in his less lucid moments. I wish she could see him. She'll never forgive herself if she ever comes out of this and realizes she didn't say good bye to her brother, or see him when he was in the hospital. I don't want to be angry with her because I know she can't control her state of mind right now. Sometimes it's hard though. I may tell what I know of his story in a later post, it'll be slightly more uplifting. He truly is one of the most interesting and intelligent men I have ever met. 

And this also," said Marlow suddenly, "has been one of the dark places of the earth

I finished reading Heart of Darkness for the third time last week. I think I've finally reached a place in my reading where I can truly begin to understand and appreciate this piece. I heart irony after all. Well, it only took three times to START to understand this book. Seriously, it's pretty dense for a 77 page novella. My goal in life is to read this at least 5 times. However I have a feeling Miami alone might be able to help me reach that goal. It's been assigned on 3 different syllabi in 3 different courses. I've gotten a different reading of it every time. It took me a little while to understand the racism in the novella. It really put me off - especially reading it in a post-colonial perspective like I did last semester. I feel like I was able to get at the heart of it this time though. I read The Shadow Line this week, and I'm not quite as impressed. Maybe I'll understand it's "complexities" better after we discuss it in class but all the metaphors seem so straight forward. Anyway. 

Basically, as much as I've whined and groaned about having to read this so many times, in the end I would seriously recommend it to any English major or lover of deep and dense literature in general.