Daily Prompt: Heroic ~ NaBloPoMo – January 11, 2014

Since Saturday is a ‘Free Writing’ day on NaBloPoMo, and since I didn’t get a chance to post on yesterday’s Daily Prompt, I’m going to combine the two today.

Daily Prompt: Heroic
by michelle w. on January 10, 2014

When you were five years old, who was your hero? What do you think of that person today?

~~~~~~~~

When I was five years old, my hero was one of my father’s younger brothers, Roger. I loved my Uncle Roger, and had a crush on him for years. Roger was 12 years old when I was 5.
Uncle Roger was special, because he didn’t treat me like a nuisance, instead he embraced me as an individual and included me in a lot of things he did. I remember when he got his first car and he would take me along riding around with his friends; he would take me to his girlfriends house to meet her. When he was sent to Vietnam, I was sad. We wrote letters back and forth, while he was in Vietnam. When he came home, he would talk to me for hours, every time he got the chance. I was sure he was telling me things that he didn’t tell to anybody else.
Not long after he came home, he married his girlfriend. I had the pleasure of making their wedding cake.
I knew he was drinking pretty heavily, but he was under a lot of pressure. I often heard my Dad talking about him and my Grandmother would cry and talk to me. Personally, I thought he could do no wrong; he was still my Uncle Roger.
Looking back in retrospect, I think he let other people see a lot more of him, than he did me. He always put a smile on his face and acted like the Uncle Roger that I loved dearly, when I was around. After Uncle Roger and his new wife, M., were married, they found a cozy little house about two blocks from where we lived, so I could walk back and forth anytime I wanted, and spent many a night at their house.
As we grew older, moved around, and had children, Uncle Roger would still come and see me when he came home to visit. When my oldest daughter was old enough, he would come and get her to stay a week or two with him, M., and their son, in the summer. My oldest daughter grew up loving him, just like I did.
I knew there were several times Roger would come and stay at my grandmother’s, for a week or a couple of weeks. I was also old enough then, that I knew he and M., were having problems. This went on for about 20 years, before they finally divorced. After their divorce, Roger started declining rapidly.
Roger had come home from Vietnam, went to work for various police departments, and finally worked his way into a State Trooper’s job. He later went to work for the Department of Transportation or D.O.T. His problems were never dealt with in the medical community, so he pretty much drank himself to death.
He had taken up with another woman, who rather than look after him and support his cries for help, she encouraged him to party and drink and God only knows what else. When his kidneys failed, she looked after him for awhile, but soon, put him in a nursing home. The nursing home was about a three-hour drive from my home and I kept saying that I was going to go visit him one weekend. Finally, my chance arrived. Hubby and I were going to a PowWow in a city, that was just about a 30-minute drive to the nursing home.
Early Saturday morning, before we had left to attend the PowWow, my Dad called and said that Roger had passed late Friday night. I couldn’t believe it. I finally was going to go see him. My Dad said he probably didn’t want me to see him in the shape he was in. I was devastated. After three-plus years, I am still devastated.
Unfortunately, I don’t have a good picture of my Uncle Roger, or I would post it. Instead, I’m just going to say, R.I.P to my Uncle Roger who passed away on September 9, 2010. You are still my hero!

Visit: http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2014/01/10/daily-prompt-hero/ To view this Daily Prompt and many more.