Farewell Uncle Vance

Wes got the call on Veteran's Day that Uncle Vance had passed away. It was only appropriate that a World War II Prisoner of War would find his way home on that day. Every trip to Wes' home town ended with a visit to Uncle Vance's place. He was always so sweet to our kids, and they had taken quite a liking to this Uncle Vance character. He had no children or grandchildren of his own, but had taken a special liking to Wes. He was the score keeper at the high school for years and never missed a game. When one of his "boys" would hit a home run, they knew Uncle Vance had a silver dollar waiting for them. He would often pull newspaper clippings from the top drawer of his desk on our visits and reminisce about this game and that player. He lived for Joe City sports. Ironically, Joseph City is playing in the high school football championship game tonight. It would have been nice for him to be able to see that, but at 92 his game days were long since past. In fact rumor has it that he had been requesting the number for Dr. Kevorkian to his visitors lately. It's hard not to be happy for him.

I have debated the past couple days about whether to take the kids to his memorial service. Uncle Vance was not a religious man and his wishes to only have a graveside service were honored. The boys knew him as well as they know their great grandpa and are sad about his passing. They have been fortunate enough to have never gone to a funeral before and I think that as much as I would like to shelter the kids from all the bad and sad things in the world, that sometimes there are some good teaching moments that shouldn't be passed up. When I told the boys that he had died, Jake's response was, "Wow this must have been his worst day ever." I told him that actually it was probably his best day ever because his body was old and sick and his spirit was ready to go back home to Heavenly Father. I explained to them that his body would be buried, but his spirit would live forever and someday his body and spirit would be reunited. Dylan was a little fixated on the burial part, but they both understood.

It was never a question if Wes would go to the service, and if the boys had not had a football game at the same time we all would have gone. This may just be a cop out, but in the end we determined that if Uncle Vance had his way he would have wanted those boys to play their game, and play they did! Jake and DB both had touchdowns, DB for the first time ever. That's for you Uncle Vance. These "ankle biters" are going to miss you. May God bless you in your journey home.