You go have fun!
By PAT WICK
© Another Day in the Country
If there was one great tug which brought us back to Ramona, it was our Uncle Hank. While our childhood memories of playing in the park and trotting to the store for penny candy prodded us to return to rural life, it was Uncle Hank who somehow plucked on our heartstrings. After all these years, he and Aunt Gertie still lived in Ramona, as did our dad's sister, Naomi, and these stalwarts welcomed us with open arms.
While Aunt Naomi cooked delicious meals and Aunt Gertie brought treasures from her storage houses, Uncle Hank was the one with the ready laugh, the good story, and the helping hand. He was the one, when I said I wanted land in Ramona, who suggested I buy grave plots. "Fifteen dollars, best deal around," he laughed. (I think he was on the cemetery board at the time.)
It was Uncle Hank, at 80, who would drive by at six in the morning on his way to work at Tatge Manufacturing and honk. He was saying "Hi," and it was a gentle reminder that it was smarter to paint houses at this hour of the morning instead of high-noon in August.
I'm not sure what I would have done for comparisons to the olden days in this column if it hadn't been for Uncle Hank. There are others who tell me stories, but Uncle Hank, with his phenomenal memory, always has been the best. If someone came into town searching for their family history, we'd call Uncle Hank. He'd come walking down to the bank, hear the request, take off his cap, scratch his head, and then spill out what he knew. "Well, yes there were some Grills who lived here
After a couple of heart attacks and some mini-strokes, Uncle Hank couldn't talk as fluently as he wished. The words just wouldn't come out right. We'd play guessing games, then, as we plied him for information, trying to fill in the gaps. This was so frustrating for him. So, more and more he shied away from public gatherings. And we stopped asking so many questions.
A little over a year ago Hank and Gertie moved to Colorado to an assisted living facility near their children. We wondered what we'd do without them in Ramona. Would the town feel the same? Was our reason for being here over? By this time, however, we had Mom (Hank's sister) here and we'd all put down roots again in this little town which was our hometown. And, we discovered that after spending four years in Ramona with our loved ones that they were still here even when they were out of sight.
We're so grateful to have spent at least 1,500 memorable days in the country with Henry Schubert. We raked leaves, laughed, fixed the roof, laughed, repaired the fence, laughed, played cards, laughed, went to Dairy Queen, laughed, called 911, and even laughed later about the ambulance ride to the hospital. Several times Hank thought he was going to die and he'd give us instructions, tell us that he loved us, that we were his girls, and we'd hold his hand and sing songs to him. The last time he was in the hospital around here, he had to be airlifted to Wichita and my sister sang his favorite song, "Star Dust," walking along beside the gurney, all the way through the hospital corridors and out to the waiting helicopter. We all feared he would die that time, too, but his heart kept on ticking long enough to get to Colorado and for Aunt Gertie to become accustomed to this new place and then he was gone.
We saw him in July. His eyes were so bad that he couldn't see much of us but he was gallantly trying to impersonate life while death hovered nearby. He felt it. He knew it. He was ready for it. Once more we told him how much we loved him, what his life and love meant to us, and joked, "Do you want to come to the rodeo with us?" He smiled. A tired smile, looked us each in the eye, kissed us square on the mouth (as was his custom) and said, "You kids go have fun."
This week we were trying to figure out when Erich Utech's house was built so we called Junior Hanschu. "I don't know," said Junior, "You better ask Hank."
"I think he's beyond asking," said my sister sadly. It was just another day in the country but that night, in a far-away city, Uncle Hank died.
