My siblings and I gathered last Sunday to talk about stuff, and although there were enough chairs I chose to site on a wooden box by the door. I dunno what it holds, but it made a good perch.
This reminded my older siblings of our Uncle Burton, and how when the family gathered in my grandmother's back yard in Hampton, New Brunswick, he used to spurn chairs and benches and perch himself on the woodpile. I don't know if he actually enjoyed sitting there; perhaps after enough people had made a big deal of it, he didn't see a way to stop.
Monday I heard from one of my cousins that Uncle Burton had died recently. He was getting along in years, of course, but what really put the stamp on it was his falling on ice somewhere on the farm and having to lie there in the cold, unable to get up, until he was found hours later. He lived for nearly a year after that, but evidently he was never the same.
That was one tough guy (not mean tough, sturdy tough). I haven't seen him in perhaps 40 years. But when I sit not on the softest chair, it's usually not out of humility, or to let others take their ease: it's to honor Uncle Burton.
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