Uncle Bob & Aunt Maureen

It seems my family has begun to embrace another aspect of leaving a legacy of love, writing...

Last Christmas, us kids all wrote about mom. We presented our writings on Christmas morning in a beautifully designed book, compliments of my sister Aimee. Our writings were our memories of mom, of how she influenced our lives. Memories of love and laughter, of some risk and some heartache. Memories of break through and wonder and more laughter and life. Our memories also revealed our dreams. In fact, our memories are the foundation for dreaming...

I believe everyone should write. Whether you have the gift or not. Not for a book deal. Though, we will all celebrate that if it happens. Its about legacy, it's a reminder of where we have been and how good Gods been - even in the hard times, especially in the hard times. It's also about establishing a promise regarding where we are going. It's about Gods goodness regarding what He has promised us as His kids, His people, our family. Its about legacy, about love, about remembering so we can overcome and overcoming so our kids can remember.

In the last year, my brother and my father have each written a book, for our family - past and future. And my sister is writing as well, she wont show us yet, or even openly admit it, but we know and the anticipation is building... we are waiting sister...

This Christmas, my cousins took this legacy idea to another level. They had the whole family write memories and thoughts for their mom and dad, my Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen. I added my memories and have posted them here for my kids, and their kids and so on...

Uncle Bob & Aunt Maureen

I was probably eight years old when uncle Bob let me drive the riding lawn mower - Its one of my favorite Uncle Bob memories. But I have many more. Uncle Bob lived in our kitchen when I was five, well, maybe not the kitchen, but I remember seeing him there a lot. Uncle Bob took me on a trip to “somewhere else” Ontario once - just him and me. We stopped at a roadside dinner and sat at the raised bar. Uncle Bob drank coffee, and I got hot chocolate and French fries. He even let me try his coffee.

When it comes to coffee – which is close to heaven for me – Uncle Bob was the first and most beautifully influential person in my life. In fact, I can’t think of those early days with Uncle Bob without seeing him with his full reddish beard, drinking coffee from his coffee thermo canister where the lid was also a cup. How cool is that, a lid that is also a cup.

And coffee was just one of the many ways Uncle Bob was cool. There were others… I’m pretty sure he had a motorcycle, well, I remember seeing him sitting on one. So even if he didn’t have a motorcycle, he was cool enough to be seen sitting on one. He traveled the world and had even been to Africa and seen giraffes. He brought me home a carved giraffe. As I already stated, He had a cool big thick beard - that smelled like coffee. He laughed a lot, him, my dad and my mom. But maybe the coolest of all was that he played guitar and sang and had a band.

One time I found a tape of his bands recording. I remember listening to it and thinking it was the coolest music ever. I also remember Uncle Bob finding me listening to it and saying I couldn’t listen to it. Looking back, I wonder now if it was “the young insecure artist syndrome” that I would later become acquainted with, or maybe it was simply that he thought the music was inappropriate for a young boy. Either way, “I would give my eyeteeth” to hear that music again. Ok Probably not my eyeteeth, that sounds serious. But I would absolutely give my baby teeth to hear that music again.

But what really set Uncle Bob apart, in the cool department, was that outside of the incident where he shut down the music listening, he pretty much let me do whatever I wanted to. He let me steer the car. He let me drink coffee, which would have given mom a heart attack. He let me ride in the truck bed on the highway, and of course, he let me drive the lawn mower.

He didn’t just let me drive the lawn mower, he trusted me so much, he went inside the house while I drove the lawn mower alone– probably to get coffee.

“Jason, this is how you make it go, and this is how you steer it. Now, just drive over all the tall grass. I’ll be right back.” He said.

And that’s what I did. I drove over the tall grass in the field and around the house, and on the hill and around the garden. It sure was fun! The lawn mower went fast and went wherever I steered it. However, there was one problem, the lawn mower didn’t seem to have a stop button. This made it tough when I got to the tree. There was some tall grass right next to the trunk and no matter how many passes I made, I just couldn’t seem to get the tall grass closest to the tree. Finally I decided to take the problem head on.

Uncle Bob just laughed when he came out to find me in a head on collision still sitting on a still running lawn mower while the back wheels churned up the earth. That was another cool thing about Uncle Bob, he never got mad, he just laughed.

Uncle Bob was also lucky; he had Aunt Maureen as his wife. She was very pretty and very nice and very smart and very sweet and very funny and very much interested in us kids her niece and nephews.

I loved visiting Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen out in the country. They had a red house with a green roof, or maybe it was a green house with a red roof. Either way, it was very Christmas-ee. Especially when it snowed. Because they lived out in the country, they had great country climbing trees that could survive tractor collisions. They also had wonderful country fields to play war in, and they even had a country cat... for a little while…

Aunt Maureen had lots of books and she seemed to be schooled in the wider world. She also had an amazing sense of humor and an incredible way in which she could laugh with her eyes. She did that a lot. Aunt Maureen is the person responsible for introducing me to J. R. R. Tolkien. In fact, I still have “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy set she gave me as a kid. I knew it was gonna be good, her eyes told me so. It was. It also was a book series and genre that changed my life – there truly is nothing better than epic fantasy...

If Uncle Bob made it legal to listen to rock and roll, and dream in the language of melody and rhythm, Aunt Maureen made it legal to read books that weren’t the Bible. The kind of books that had elves and dwarfs and trolls and orcs and most important, hero’s that overcame overwhelming odds to save the world...

She also made great cookies, which was probably what she was doing while I mowed the grass that day. And we could have more than one cookie, and we could have them before dinner, and we could have them before we went to bed. She also liked coffee and the house smelled like it all day long. And there were books that sat out everywhere, way more than at our house. And there was a guitar that sat out as well. I would pick it up and try to strum it in a way that didn’t offend my ears. It is one of the earliest memories I have of dreaming in that beautiful language.

There are so many Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen stories I could tell, stories of later in life, fun stories, good stories. But sometimes you just want to go back and remember those precious early days when you were just becoming. Those wonder years when you were most impressionable and most susceptible to dreaming. Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen are woven into the fabric of my earliest memories. I was born to dream and I grew up surrounded by dreamers. I was born to love and I grew up surrounded by lovers. I was born to laugh and I grew up surrounded by joy.

And as I grew Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen have always been there, cheering me on. They have been a constant strength. They have modeled love and dreaming and laughter. No one knows this more than my cousins, but we all would agree.

Some of the best things in life, they were invested in me by Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen. They loved us kids, their nieces and nephews. They love me still. I’ve always felt that.

They gave me a beautifully romantic view of coffee, rock n roll and literature. I drink a lot of coffee these days. It’s been good for my soul. I’ve made some of my own music. I also have some tapes no one is allowed to listen to. I write a bit these days as well. And I know how to be loved and how to love and how to laugh. I believe this is because I grew up with real life heroes, the kind that save the world, that raise and support world changers, those who lived fully trusting God, those that release a legacy of love. Uncle Bob and Aunt Maureen sowed some of those seeds in my formative years and they are still sowing. And I’m honored and blessed and glad that they did and that they still do.

I love you guys! Merry Christmas!

- Jason

To read last years monument for my mom you can go here