Well, I never would have guessed that my second post back from blog-limbo would be such a downer.  I really didn’t know for sure what I’d even be posting on once we were back up and running, but I assumed it would have been encouraging.  Uplifting.  At the very least light-hearted.  But life’s funny like that.  We don’t always get what we were expecting… and I wasn’t expecting a call with some really bad news.  Much less TWO calls with some really bad news.

First, yesterday afternoon my mom called to tell me that my Uncle Benny passed away earlier in the day.  He’d been ailing for some time, but I think he just gave up really.  Just laid down and waited to die.  When I was a kid, I used to sleep over at Uncle Ben and Aunt Julie’s at least once a summer.  Their oldest son Ron is the only male cousin I have that’s my age.  I lived in Jersey City, and they lived in Avenel, NJ.  Any time we left Jersey City, to my young mind it was like we were going on some long trip somewhere.  I just Mapquested the drive… just under 18 miles.  A 30 minute car ride   And even though Ron and I didn’t always get along, those were good times.  We built many a “go-cart” out of scrap wood and old bicycle parts that Uncle Benny always had lying around.  We’d ride bikes down to the 7-11 at all hours of the night and get Frozen Cokes.  Now that I think of it though, if I thought the 30 minute drive from my house to theirs was some fantastical adventure, probably “all hours of the night” was probably more like 7 or 8 o’clock.  Uncle Ben was a pretty strict guy.  I don’t think he would have approved of us tooling around town in the wee hours of the morning sucking on Coke Icees.  But strict as he was, he also was a pretty cool guy to me.  He always had a Chevy station wagon of one model year or another when I was a kid, which held lots of potential for some neat stuff to do and see.  Like going to Sandy Hook or Rahway… or Woodbridge Mall, which at that time was THE shopping destination in New Jersey.  Or to a drive-in movie.  With the station wagon, he’d back in to the space, fold down the back seat and we’d watch the movie from there… usually in our pajamas.   He grilled out.  A lot.  He had a backyard with a steep hill (again, I’d bet that hill is probably not much more than a foot drop off) and we’d ride our bikes down that hill at what seemed like break-neck speeds and try to keep from crashing into the back of the house.  He had a basement with a pool table.  And his house had an attic that he was perpetually turning into finished living space (and trying to keep hidden from the tax assessor ).  Sometimes Ron and I would sleep up in the attic (while it was in various stages of construction), which aside from sleeping in some fort we’d built somewhere, was about the coolest place I could have imagined.  Avenel didn’t have many sidewalks, so I always considered going there to be “out in the country.”  Never mind that we were only minutes away from the Linden oil storage tank farm (which blew up when I was still living up there) and a whole corridor of industrial complexes.  A byegone piece of childhood history.  I haven’t been home to NJ since 1984, and I always find myself promising to get back before too many folks pass on.  And now Uncle Benny is gone. Time’s a-wastin.

Later yesterday evening, as we were just finishing up supper, I got a call from my good friend Jeff Turner.  He was calling to let me know that Retia Dukes had passed away a few hours earlier.  Some of you may remember that I had asked for prayer for Jimmy and Retia Dukes back in April, as they were struck by an SUV while walking across the street from the New Orleans Seminary campus to the Providence Guest House.  Both were in pretty rough shape and at that time nobody was holding out any hope for Mrs. Retia.  But she battled hard and was making some really encouraging progress from severe head trauma.  However, she took a turn for the worse late last week, and a massive blood infection overcame her.  She died one day short of the 4 month anniversary of the accident.

I had been getting almost weekly updates from my mom about my uncle, and while I’m greatly saddened about his death, I knew it was probably coming sooner rather than later.  In the case of Mrs. Retia, she was fighting and battling and improving, and even though the last couple of Caringbridge updates warned of trouble brewing, it was still quite a shock to get the news.  We are comforted knowing that Mrs. Retia is now healed and in the arms of her Savior.  Honestly, I have no such assurance about my uncle.

Please keep the Dukes family and the Favale family in your prayers in the coming days and weeks.  I appreciate it a lot.