-- Job 1: 20-21 (KJV)
My memories of Bobbo and Uncle John are few and precious. I can remember crawling up into Bobbo’s lap to watch Red Buttons on television. His laugh made me feel good. Uncle John had a winning smile. Mom can correct me, but I must have been about three years old when the news came to Platteville that Bobbo and Uncle John had been killed in an automobile accident between Denver and Colorado Springs. As James Burke so eloquently details in his book The Day the Universe Changed mine was that day. To that point, life was about just that. Starting with Mom and Dad was an ever-expanding horizon of new faces and new relationships, but on that day I was introduced to death. I had no notion of the Butterfly Effect—I’m still not sure that I understand it—but the death of Mom’s father and brother forever changed the ever-forward progression of time in such a way that no one can ever know how it might have turned out differently had they lived. It was an early introduction to the fragility of life and the irreversibility of death. Things were never quite so normal again.
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