It's kinda depressing.
This is my uncle, Jackey Dale Sturguess. He died in 1995. He was the first in a long string of losses for my family. Nobody seems to remember him. We didn't talk about him as much as we should have after he died. Maybe the adults didn't think we children were old enough to grasp what suicide is. But even when I grew up, I had to pry information out of the rest of my family. Jackey took his own life (or was murdered, depending on how one interprets the evidence - either way, it was all because of drugs).
Nobody remembers him. Even his public arrest records seem to have vanished. Aside from census records, a few photographs, a poorly Xeroxed copy of his autopsy report that I found in the family Bible, and a tombstone bearing the words "Beloved Son, Brother, and Dad," it's as if he never existed. Maybe everyone was too hurt to bring him up. Years after his death, I overheard my grandmother tell someone that my grandfather would "never stop being mad at Jack."
Jackey wore some form of prominent facial hair most of his life, like my father and the rest of the males in my family. Sometimes he had a horseshoe mustache, sometimes a respectable trimmed beard, sometimes a big long ZZ Top chin-slinky. My father said the funeral home cut his beard off.
My mother said it should have been a closed-casket funeral - she said his mouth seemed swollen from the bullet wound. I always found it wrong that they took his beard off, even if Jackey wasn't really there to know it. It just seems like an indignity. That wasn't the only insult - the pastor mentioned suicide one too many times in his funeral sermon, which angered my uncle Mike to the point he had to be restrained from making a scene. It could be said that the whole mourning process was a mess. Maybe that's another reason people were so quick to put Jackey out of their minds. Friends who shot dope with him have long since scattered and destroyed their own selves - or gotten sober and exalted themselves above the memory of such an addict as Jackey. The police who beat him with flashlights have other things to deal with, other dopeheads to bust. And my own family slowly broke up, with anger and stubbornness taking up too much room in the heart for sorrow to have a place.
So, I remember my uncle by wearing a beard, just like he did. It's a reddish brown, slowly graying memorial to Jackey Sturguess. And it works out for me, because I look so good with it, and because I have no chin - without my beard, I look like I'm a character on "Bob's Burgers." Jesus says in Matthew chapter 10, "the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." God did an awful lot of counting when He totaled the sum of hair that would sprout on my head when He took into consideration this kinky beard. He numbered even more for my uncle Jackey - the hair on his scalp may have fallen off right after high school, but his messy beard that grew to his chest was numbered hair by hair by his Savior. A finite number, great as it may have been, just like the number of his days - greater though they could have been.
Jackey Sturguess was more precious than many sparrows. I'll wear my beard, coarse and unkempt as it may be, to remind me that I too am precious in the sight of the infinite Creator, and the love of His Son has made this beard finer than the coat of the finest sparrow.
It's weird, the whole beard thing - I started it! Now they all do it! They all either look like Rasputin or your dad a year after the divorce (my particular form of beard is known as "the Jethro Tull"). But when I see everyone imitating the Sturguess style, I'm not only flattered, but I'm reminded of my uncle - forgotten in that weird, slow shuffle of time and loss, but not before the sight of our Savior.
Dang I'm interesting.
"As for man, his days are like grass;
as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more."
-Psalm 103
Nobody remembers him. Even his public arrest records seem to have vanished. Aside from census records, a few photographs, a poorly Xeroxed copy of his autopsy report that I found in the family Bible, and a tombstone bearing the words "Beloved Son, Brother, and Dad," it's as if he never existed. Maybe everyone was too hurt to bring him up. Years after his death, I overheard my grandmother tell someone that my grandfather would "never stop being mad at Jack."
Jackey wore some form of prominent facial hair most of his life, like my father and the rest of the males in my family. Sometimes he had a horseshoe mustache, sometimes a respectable trimmed beard, sometimes a big long ZZ Top chin-slinky. My father said the funeral home cut his beard off. My mother said it should have been a closed-casket funeral - she said his mouth seemed swollen from the bullet wound. I always found it wrong that they took his beard off, even if Jackey wasn't really there to know it. It just seems like an indignity. That wasn't the only insult - the pastor mentioned suicide one too many times in his funeral sermon, which angered my uncle Mike to the point he had to be restrained from making a scene. It could be said that the whole mourning process was a mess. Maybe that's another reason people were so quick to put Jackey out of their minds. Friends who shot dope with him have long since scattered and destroyed their own selves - or gotten sober and exalted themselves above the memory of such an addict as Jackey. The police who beat him with flashlights have other things to deal with, other dopeheads to bust. And my own family slowly broke up, with anger and stubbornness taking up too much room in the heart for sorrow to have a place.
So, I remember my uncle by wearing a beard, just like he did. It's a reddish brown, slowly graying memorial to Jackey Sturguess. And it works out for me, because I look so good with it, and because I have no chin - without my beard, I look like I'm a character on "Bob's Burgers." Jesus says in Matthew chapter 10, "the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows." God did an awful lot of counting when He totaled the sum of hair that would sprout on my head when He took into consideration this kinky beard. He numbered even more for my uncle Jackey - the hair on his scalp may have fallen off right after high school, but his messy beard that grew to his chest was numbered hair by hair by his Savior. A finite number, great as it may have been, just like the number of his days - greater though they could have been.
Jackey Sturguess was more precious than many sparrows. I'll wear my beard, coarse and unkempt as it may be, to remind me that I too am precious in the sight of the infinite Creator, and the love of His Son has made this beard finer than the coat of the finest sparrow.
It's weird, the whole beard thing - I started it! Now they all do it! They all either look like Rasputin or your dad a year after the divorce (my particular form of beard is known as "the Jethro Tull"). But when I see everyone imitating the Sturguess style, I'm not only flattered, but I'm reminded of my uncle - forgotten in that weird, slow shuffle of time and loss, but not before the sight of our Savior.
Dang I'm interesting.
"As for man, his days are like grass;
as a flower of the field, so he flourishes.
For the wind passes over it, and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more."
-Psalm 103
No comments:
Post a Comment