my uncle soph

it seems like i don't have a ton of family. and, as of last night, i have a little less. my uncle soph (short for sophocles) passed away.

my mom just called me to tell me; she and my dad are still up in hartford with carter for her mfa show. according to my mother, it appears he had a massive heart attack and that was that. i'm in shock. he was 78 and, although his health has been not too good recently, i didn't expect this. the last time i saw him, i believe, was in 1999 in hatteras…i can't believe it has been that long. some of you had the pleasure of meeting him at various times — petunia, matt d, dan (way back in the day at the beach)…

my mother's sister's husband, he was quiet but witty. and gets the (perhaps dubious) honor of being the first man i knew who wore sandals a lot. i have an urge to just write and write now, mainly because i'm in shock and don't know what else to do. i'm going to bite my tongue though, at least for now.

i found this bio he wrote online on a railroad site:

"I was born and raised in Brooklyn, N.Y. I was a typical New Yorker. I knew of Connecticut and Massachusetts, and of the eastern seaboard down to Virginia. I knew New Jersey was across the Hudson, and California somewhere on the other side of the globe. One day I reached the western edge of New Jersey at the Delaware River Gap. I looked across and, good grief, there was land over there! I crossed, and no one yelled at me, stopped me, arrested me, shot me, or jailed me. I escaped! And I never went back. This was my project in Creative Writing 101.

"How a kid moved from the concrete canyons of Brooklyn to the corn and soy bean fields of Iowa is a project for Creative Writing 102. But I love it here. Iowa and Mason City have been very good to my family and me.

"I am a model railroader, who likes to shoot photos of trains. I started in HO, but bitten by narrow gauge, found HOn3 too tiny and too primitive in 1953 (no tiny motors, for example), and, after two frustrating years, ordered my first On3 locomotive; it arrived in 1958. There was no Sn3 back then, which, I feel, is a more practical size than On3. I model the Colorado narrow gauges, but use my own RR name. My early claim to fame was a series of articles and photos in Model Railroader back in the 1950’s to 1970’s. I was once good enough to have the “Model of the Month.” But, at age 72, my eyes are not what they used to be and my hands are no longer steady. So be it…"

my mother sent me a scanned bio from the residence where they had recently moved into:

i want to say more — about the times i visited them, about the times at the beach with him (and the rest of the family), about the news that trickles through to me in email forwards and phone calls. the memories i have — all of them. isn't this always the case? isn't this the way it is? the desire to create meaning from loss, order out of chaos, permanence from memory?

godspeed, mr. marty. you will be missed.