Thread by @MollyMcKew

Hey tweeps -- my uncle died today. I think it's important to speak for the dead, to learn from who they were, and what they meant to the people around them, so I just want to share a little of his story.

Because, in its own way, it's a great story. It gives me hope to tell it /1

https://twitter.com/mollymckew/status/1114179574244499457

This uncle was my mom's oldest brother. He was born just after my grandfather deployed to the Pacific when we entered WWII.

This is my grandparents looking dashing and '40s on their wedding day. /2

He and my mom were really close when they were kids. I think they shared a room until almost high school.

I love this picture of them in their bunk beds in their tiny bedroom -- even though this doll my mom had may have been the inspiration for the poltergeist clown, I swear. /3

The bunkbed pic captured the energy of my uncle. Larger than life, a ginger bear of a man, boisterous & loud, a storyteller.

He was very much the eldest son in a family that expected him to live up to all that meant, being his father's son.

The photos of this era are glorious/4

(My uncle is the giant teenager in that photo. Literally, a ginger bear)

I wrote a little about my grandfather here before /5

https://mobile.twitter.com/mollymckew/status/828218880887758851

Anyway -- my uncle tried to be everything that was expected of him.

And he was terrible at it.

He wanted to be a successful businessman like his father -- but he failed, repeatedly. And catastrophically. I remember some story about paper coffins. I don't know. I was young /6

Part of trying to be the man everyone expected him to be was marrying "the right kind of girl."

So around the time he went off to college, he broke up with his high school sweetheart, who he deeply believed was the love of his life, because my grandmother nagged him into it /7

The high school love was, apparently, not "the right kind of girl." I don't know what this means. I don't think he did either. So he went off to college and a few years later my mom followed him there, and he ended up dating one of her roommates, I think. /8

When he graduated he did what people graduating from catholic college did -- which was propose to his girlfriend, and after she graduated, get married.

He then set about building "the right kind of life" -- kids, houses, business, wife -- and as far as I know, he was miserable/9

His failure in business projected across his life. He became isolated from the rest of the family -- I met him once when I was maybe 12, and that was the first time anyone has seen him in years, and then never saw this amazing black sheep again until I was in my 30s /10

I think he felt like a phony in that life. This is just my guess. But he was playing a part and telling a story -- but deeply unhappy.

Apparently, so was his wife. Who at some point, once their kids starting going to college, asked for a divorce. /11

This was a mess, and left him alienated from his kids. At some point, moving in a daze through the aftermath, he was walking down the street --

And ran into, literally, his high school sweetheart. /12

In the almost 30 years since, she had also been married, had kids, a career. Her husband had died, I think.

They traded stories over coffee.

Less than 6 months later they traded vows on a beach in Florida -- doing what they should have done all those long years ago. /13

My uncle was a man transformed. A weight lifted off him. He reconnected with my mom and his other siblings. In the great irony that is life, he and his wife now lived closest to my grandmother in her last years, and spent tons of time with her. /14

My grandmother loved and appreciated the time and care that the formerly shunned "not the right kind of girl" spent with her, in helping her, in how she made my uncle better.

Eventually, she admitted she had been wrong and came as close as she ever would to apologizing ... /15

... By saying my grandfather had been right that things work out the way they are supposed to.

And in this case, they did. /16

My uncle got a second run at life, and he embraced it, and lived it well with a woman he loved, and had always loved. He got another 15+ years of happiness and adventure. He got that time back with his siblings and his mom. Everyone got closer, and he lived every minute well /17

I didn't know him well, since he was absent for so much of my life, and then I was wandering all over.

But I love this story. I tell it all the time. Because what a great story! /16

The end was sudden, but thankfully short. And she was with him, and they were together, and there's really nothing else to say.

But maybe today, spare a thought for the wayward souls who wander amongst the living, looking to make up for lost time. /19

The time is never lost if the end point is a good one -- if you live the story you wanted, and end it right.

Spare a thought for these star-crossed and then lucky lovers as they have another spell apart that starts tonight. /20

I hope he finds his parents -- my grandparents -- sipping really strong cocktails on a Cincinnati porch somewhere, listening to the cicadas hum and watching the fireflies wake at dusk, and catches my grandpa up on all those new stories. /21

Farewell, and well rest, Steve Rechtsteiner. You got it right in the end.

And don't worry -- she knows you're still waiting for her. /end

PS -- my grandparents with Steve and my mom. Love this pic