Remembering my cousin

Gordon Anderson died today of lung cancer in Michigan. I think he was in his mid-50s.

Gordie was the youngest of my three Anderson boy cousins -- George, Jr., and Dan were his big brothers. George was a few years older than me, Dan was my age, Gordie a few years younger.

An oddity in my extended family when we were all growing up in the '50s was a severe gender imbalance. On my Dad's side, his two brothers and three sisters produced seven boys, but no girls.

On my Mom's side, her two sisters and one brother (Uncle George) produced six boys and two girls. So, of the 15 cousins we got to know, 13 were boys.

By contrast, in our nuclear family, there were three girls and me.

A statistician would have fun with this. Whereas overall boys constituted about three-quarters of the offspring, in my own family, boys accounted for 25% (me).

Outside of my family, 86.7% of all 15 births in my generation were male. The odds of this can be computed, according to various formulas, but for me the salient facts are these:

*My father's birth family produced three boys and three girls. So did I.

*My mother's birth family consisted of three girls and one boy, which is exactly the household I grew up in.

Which brings me back to the one boy in my mother's birth family, Uncle George. I know he is hurting tonight, back home in Michigan, having lost his youngest son. He is in very poor health himself, and he is the last surviving member of my parents' generation in either of their families.

He is also the only one who was born in America. The other nine (6 females and 3 males) were born in foreign lands. Uncle George is the lone native son, but when he was a little boy, he used to talk about what it was like "back in Scotland," a place he'd never visited but which hung over the household like a dark storm cloud of unresolved memories, particularly for his parents, my grandparents.

The Scots are a strange people, endearing and imposing at the same time. My grandfather, Uncle George's father, was an especially intimidating man (to me). He was a master tool-and-dyesman, exactly the type Henry Ford was looking for when he sent his earliest sound trucks around Scottish cities in the 1920's.

My grandfather answered the call, and moved his young family over here, to the place where (they were told) the streets were painted with gold.

Immigrant experiences have been richly chronicled by many writers more skilled than I. Let me simply say that I felt my grandparents' sense of sadness at a culture lost. Whenever I glimpsed them with their other old friends from Scotland, I was amazed by their strange accents and their animated discussions.

I acquired a lifelong love of Scottish meat pies at this stage; a thirst that remains unquenched to this day.

***

There’s so much more I could write, or try to write, but tonight my heart is heavy with sadness. I miss Gordie even though I haven't seen him in, what, 30 years? I had heard he was ill, but I had no idea how very ill he in fact was. His big brother George took him in and cared for him until the end.

Of all of my male cousins, many of whom tended to gross me out, Gordie was one of the sweetest and the strangest of all. He was such a picky eater! If I remember correctly, Aunt Reta could only convince him to eat peanut butter.

Of course, memories are suspect, and perhaps there was another type of food he would eat, but I don't think so.

Also, in the '50s and early '60s, when most of my other cousins were cultivating their machismo, Gordie just stayed himself, not particularly athletic or aggressive or ambitious for glory.

His brothers and I used to sit around and talk about how we would wish to die, if it turned out to be up to us. The rest of us agreed we'd rather die as heroes for our country than in any other way. But again, unless, my memory is faulty, Gordie didn't express much enthusiasm for warfare.

When Uncle George moved his family to the Tampa area to be closer to his parents in their declining years, he opened a soft ice cream shop, which, when we visited, was one of the true highlights of my youth. We worked there, alongside our cousins, and we were paid in ice cream -- all we wanted!

That's about as close to nirvana as I have ever been.

The Anderson boys also introduced me to Mad Magazine somewhere during this period, and that had more influence on my evolving sensibilities than anything going on back home in school.

On another occasion, Uncle George and the boys got a pet monkey. I think this is when they were living in Ohio, and I think the monkey's name was Tommy. Of course, today, having monkeys as pets is illegal, I'm quite sure, but Tommy (if that indeed was his name) had quite an exciting life with the Anderson boys.

Some of my most special memories date back to the years when Uncle George and family lived in Wisconsin, just across the magnificently vast Lake Michigan. They would take the ferry in summer and meet our family at Ludington State Park, nestled next to Lake Hamlin and the sand dunes of the northwestern coast of the Lower Peninsula.

At Ludington, we had many adventures. Gordie, Dan, George and I roamed the woods and the riverbanks, the lakeshore and the swamps where delicious Michigan blueberries grew.

It is all so long ago now. My mind becomes hazy as I try to bring up the memories. Tears fill my eyes as I remember my younger cousin Gordie, a gentle soul if ever there was one in my generation of males.

He never married, and he suffered ill health for some years as he aged. I wish I could have seen him one more time. In the end, he was where he always wanted to be, with his family.

I mourn for him tonight. And I am so very sad for my uncle and my aunt, a woman who always had a plate of cookies waiting whenever we came to visit. Uncle George is the guy, who, when carrying my Dad's ashes down to Mud Lake at Rolling Hills for my mother and I to spread in the lake where he loved to fish, joked: "I came down this hill many times with Tom (my Dad) but this is the first time I could say whatever I wanted to him, without him talking back."

Maybe it's time for me to say this to my sole surviving Uncle and his family: "I love you. May Gordon rest in peace. I am proud to say I was his cousin."

-30-