Uncle John is gone

I'm the Prince Harry of the family. But like Harry, I love my family as much as I reveal their warts.

I was his only niece and he was my beloved uncle. His name was John Luther Kammerdiener: I feared his judgment, yet silently sought out his wisdom. After Mom, his sister "Kathy", passed in 2018 I was finishing my master's thesis at King's. He did not understand why I would return to London after I submitted it. "Because I want to graduate with my cohort."

"Laurie, I never met anyone who needed to be in the ceremony. You need to get back and get a JOB." He was right, of course, but he also watched the livestream from Royal Festival Hall and congratulated me in the form of $700 and a card from my aunt Ellen. "We are so proud of you," she wrote. Two PhDs proud of ME.

My mother's relationship with him was sometimes fraught. He'd buy her an expensive bed for her guest bedroom, yet she blew up when Ellen asked for the wi-fi password. Mom would write to me in later years that they had gotten closer. That was true geographically -- she moved back to Texas in 2013 then north to Waco, closer to Marble Falls, his home - in 2017. She purred after a compliment or memory of a shared joke. Oh how they could tell stories! Y'all dont know a joke if you don't know a Texan!

Of all those close to him, I knew my uncle the longest. I was, in 1961, the first baby he held. He adored me, as only an uncle could. This was the same year he graduated #1 in his class at West Point. Here he is shaking LBJ's hand!

That he later fought in the Vietnam war, luckily returning to us, before becoming a nuclear physicist was a testament to his patriotism. He was extremely disciplined, focused, and of course, smart. He made SOS, green something or other, which caused me to scream as a girl. He had a girlfriend named Pat between wives Robin and Ellen, a buxom and spirited blonde who enjoyed cocktails out with Mom. He was an atheist, a thinker, a Ranchman, a Texan who'd return to his roots as a retiree. He lived and worked in Livermore then Los Alamos.

When my parents split in 1969, Uncle John became a surrogate dad to my brother and me. We would hang out in his backyard, where he had built my cousin Kristen an elorate sandbox. We would eat on a beautiful table he had probably built. (He had built his sister a gorgeous cedar hope chest.) One time I smushed up food I didn't like until it looked like gravy. No idea if it reflected upon his skills. Aunt Robin, whom he would divorce years before she tragically came down with MS, was a warm and lovely person who also showered my brother and me with affection.

How does one measure this loss? I am as I said, Prince Harry-esque. Every family has its dysfunction and ours is no different. Yet, I always knew my uncle loved me and vice-versa. I went to my cousin Susan's college graduation, and as I searched for him in that auditorium, I sensed he saw me. They approached, he beaming, "I said Laurie always wears her sunglasses on her head."

Did I? It never dawned on me that was the case! Like so much else with loss, such memories are golden. I am sorry for not having called him more (we were shy together), but grateful for the time we had. "Life isn't about what you almost did," he told me in an interview, after I gushed that he'd "almost" been a Rhode's Scholar (something about not having completed the paperwork).

I took those words to heart and made it through nine years of struggle to finally get to King's College London, then earn my master's a year later. He knew how hard it was for me to keep my eye on the ball after Mom died, but I did, and graduated with Merit.

So here's to you, avuncular one. You were a North Star, whether explaining the intricacies of the eighteenth-century circumferentor to me for my thesis research, or taking us snow skiing at Taos. You were still crazy in love with Ellen long into your marriage, telling her at your son Mike's first wedding, "I'd marry you all over again."

We loved you, Uncle John. Rest with Mom, grandpa Pop, Uncle Norman and Mama Sue.