Uncle Paddy

[lishesque]

I went to the beach today with my mum and my aunt because it was a beautiful spring day. On the drive home, I found out that Uncle Paddy had passed away in 2013. It came as a shock to me because nobody had told me. I'm a little upset that nobody told me because I'd been close to him when I was little

Comments

[reiexnihilo]

What a relationship! I can't actually hold all that in my head at once.

I dunno if it's fair to ask, but what about yourself now do/can you attribute to having known known him? (Apart from spelling Sydney and related.)

[lishesque]

I think it's just developed my older-person-of-that-era empathy? It humanises the attitudes/behaviours that he had.

He was also a Vietnam War veteran and I remember interviewing him for a school project once. All my questions were coming from the perspective that the war was a bad thing, and he answered in a way that made me understand that a lot of the soldiers who went there didn't (and still don't) think it was a mistake. And it was a shock to me at the time, but now it's obvious that he would have a different perspective on it.