A Letter That Will Make You Feel Uncomfortable at Best

[seclark]

my instance is kind of on the other end of the spectrum. instead of a child, it's my great uncle. 86 years old, with some type of learning disability. never went to school. lived with his mother in the Ozark mountains until she died in 1972. the only sibling he had that would have anything to do w/him was my grandmother(his sister), who took him in, and started taking care of him.

when my grandmother died, I promised her that I would take care of ernie as long as he lived. I moved him and what little he had into an apartment on our property we had made to stay in while we built our house. it's actually the first time in his life where he has freedom to make some of his own decisions. he fixes his own coffee, breakfast and lunch. he'll either eat supper with us, or we take something over for him.

as far as I know, he's never actually had any type of studies done that would explain what type of disability he has. can't read or write(except his name). I have to set his microwave every day at 60:00. I have different color pieces of tape on his tv remote buttons so he can go back and forth between the only to channels he watches. take him to doctors, monitor his medicines, etc. he gets confused very easily.

ernie doesn't have a mean bone in his body. he gets up every day and goes outside to work on something...anything. he does get depressed in the winter when he's stuck inside.

he loves people. lives for when our kids/grandkids come down. will talk to and trust anyone(which is frightening at times).

ernie was the youngest of 7 children. they've all passed away but him. he does have numerous nieces and nephews that we never hear from. I don't expect them to offer to keep him...****, I wouldn't know what to do without him around. but I know it would mean a lot to him just to know they were thinking about him.

craziest thing about ernie is, he can play guitar, banjo, mandolin, harmonica beautiful...I can sit and listen to him forever. no lessons...just sits there and works at it until it makes music. I took him to a weekly sr citizens music get-together where they take turns playing a song and everyone jumps in, but had to stop because he wasn't playing the way they did.

holy shit, I wrote a lot...sorry.
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