Charles F. Corrigan - “Uncle Chuck” - I got a text from my mother this morning at 4AM. Ask yourself when do you ever get good news from your mother at 4AM? Yeah, NEVER! My Uncle Chuck had passed away. Sitting up in bed I was over come with a great sense of peace and relief. If you know my family you know we don’t die well or peacefully. Not in the cards. His long suffering was over and now he could rest easy.

I sat there and thought of all the memories I have of my uncle. He was my father’s older brother, his right hand guy in business, and just a great uncle. I used to booby trap his office as a kid, make him fill out an attendance form that he had been at work, and generally just be an annoying little shit. He took it all in stride, letting me wreck havoc in his office, just smirking the whole time. From what I remember he definitely had more patience than my father. My first memory of using a computer was in his office, same with a type writer, a fax, and phone that I just LOVED pushing all the buttons on. I would constantly steal his cigarette’s, Kool’s, soft pack, because smoking kills right? Surprisingly he never got pissed, I would have.

Later in life on more than a few occasions I got to see him with his grand kids and the joy, elation, and happiness they brought him. How they brought out a little kid in an old man. It was amazing to just sit back and watch those moments. They were never guaranteed to my uncle, he knew it, and it was evident without words he cherish everyone of those moments. 

My uncle didn’t have an easy run in the game of life but I never heard him complain once. He just got on with it, dealt with it, and went about living vs. focusing on some of what I can only imagine was profoundly overwhelming. Was he perfect? Who the hell is?

I will miss giving him shit, that smirk and “hey Johnny” and the sense I got being around him. That unspoken thing that he knew the pieces of me that are like my Dad, understood, respected them.

Goodbye Uncle Chuck, Godspeed…………..