Wind/Break

Even the house of your skin is no shelter for long

A few weeks back, we lost my uncle Jim on his 92nd birthday. His life was long and full, and he left the world after his kids and grandkids gathered around him in hospice to sing him Happy Birthday. Of all our aunts and uncles, his family was the one that my siblings and I grew up nearest to, spent holidays with, kept track of after we became adults. But as the youngest among a whole slew of cousins crossing a 20 year age spread, I never knew him well. And as so often happens with the death of an older relative, I’m learning new things about his younger days from people who knew him before I existed as they tell his stories in remembrance. Like a time when Jim served a medical position in the U.S. Navy and his ship was caught in high seas between New Zealand an Antarctica. A towering rogue wave broke the windows on the bridge, sending glass flying into the face of the captain. Jim, apparently one of the only people aboard not felled by sea sickness, pingponged his way to the upper floor, lashed the person to a post, and sewed their face up on the spot.

It is hard to imagine, now, someone like that being betrayed by their body. But it happens to us all, later or sooner. I drew this comic in 2019, about a windstorm that broke my tent and a false-alarm medical emergency that reminded me of my own body’s fallibility. When Jim began treatment for his second cancer around that time (which he ended up beating, lucky and stubborn fighter that he was), I sent the comic to him. And I send it to him again now, wherever he is.

This post first appeared on The Last Word on Nothing in October of 2019. All original artwork by the author.