It wouldn’t be 2023 without another loss, and this time our family lost my Dad’s older brother – the oldest of the Ilagan brothers – my Uncle Ding (a shortened version of Narding, which is a Filipino nickname for Leonardo). That leaves just one last Ilagan brother – my Uncle Pablo – who just visited this fall.
Uncle Ding had had similar medical afflictions as my Dad, but for years longer. In many ways, it is yet another erosion of the people who have been in my life since I was born, and an echo of the loss of Dad this past summer.
Uncle Ding and his wife, my Aunt Sally, formed part of our favorite family visits in our childhood. They lived in Cherry Hill, New Jersey with their three children – our cousins Greg, Lee Marie and Mark. They were only a few years older, but as kids they might as well have been adults, as they wanted little to do with us, with the occasional exception of Mark, who took us around the block on his motorcycle once.
Our visits were centered around the NJ anesthesiology conference that Dad would attend with his brother. Mom would take us around to see the sights, usually in nearby Philadelphia, but we were more interested in hanging out in our Uncle’s cellar, where a pool table and air hockey and a foosball table provided the dreams for two boys whose own cellar was then only a holding place for the washer and dryer.
My brother and I would sneak out of bed at night and creep down into the basement, fire up the air hockey engine, clicking around the pool balls and somehow avoiding getting yelled at for keeping the house awake. My Aunt and Uncle seemed less strict with their kids than our Mom and Dad were with us, but everyone thinks that about their parents I suppose.
I remember one night we had already changed into our pajamas and were in the family room waiting for bedtime. I’d crossed my arms in front of me and must have looked cold, as my Uncle came over and asked if I wanted him to turn up the heat. It was the simplest and kindest thing to offer a kid like me, and something my own parents would have never bothered to do. I told him I was fine, but that little act endeared him to me for life.
He and Aunt Sally were a foil to my own parents in many ways, and they were there for all the weddings and funerals and formative family events in our lives. In later years, Andy got to to meet them, and he was as amused by them as they were by him. Now, another light has gone out, adding to the darkness that 2023 will forever embody for us.
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