~ from OCTOBER 2004 ~
Before one of my Uncle’s visits, my brother and I found an old coffee maker in the basement, and in our make-shift room we set it up in the hopes of luring him into our company and keeping him there. He was alway driving coffee – black and scalding hot. We just wanted to be around him then – watching him, listening to him, laughing with him. Everyone wanted that. He entranced certain people – his long trail of curling smoke and a growing length of ash dangling precariously over his knee, ready to break off at any moment.
He didn’t care, oblivious to so much, yet the ash didn’t fall – his arm moved to the ashtray just in time, every time. I often watched that ash burn, hoping to catch it fall, hoping to see that my Uncle’s apathy could be hurtful and messy to himself and not just to us. It never fell. Not on my watch anyway.
It seemed some days that the ash would get longer and longer, that his fingers would turn to ash too, and then his hand, and his arm and his body, and we would all watch – mesmerized, mortified, transfixed – and he couldn’t even be bothered to care.
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