A Perspective on Uncle Charlie (1975-2015)

Charlie's hari, example one

**This is a raw emotion process of the death of my uncle. It is not meant to be flowing and eloquent. It is meant to be a method of the unique mourning process that comes with a complicated and dysfunctional relationship.**

Most of my memories of Uncle Charlie are from my childhood. Many memories are funny stories, and many others matter-of-fact statements on how his life was.

Charlie would have been 40 this year, but he seemed much other than my Uncle Jon, who also turned 40 recently.
He had Fetal Alcohol Syndrome.
His hair was always a mess. Or dyed blonde, and he was bi racial with very curly hair, so it wasn't the best look for him.
His street name was Squirrel. People still knew him as that as of yesterday.  When his hair was "blonde" he temporarily wanted it to be changed to Bumblebee. I think we all liked Squirrel 'better.'

Uncle Charlie spent a lot of time in his early adult life without a permanent home. It was due to this that he would (by my parent's permission) sleep on our various porches when we lived in Virginia. He also slept in the basement of the duplex (which led to our cat Simba/Big Boy, who was an indoor cat, being let out and in the pound for several weeks.). He also slept on the couches we had in our homes, but after coming home drunk and falling asleep with the contents of his pockets spilling out (including chewing tobacco, with curious preschool and elementary school aged girls in the house), he was relocated to the porch at the duplex, and then the shed at our home in Bridgewater. I have memories of coming downstairs in the middle of the night (for a bathroom break) and hearing the TV static and hearing him snoring on the couch.

Charlie in Steelers gear

We had interesting memories--to say the least-- of Uncle Charlie. I remember him giving us girls two Disney movies, and then later asking for them back. One was the Lion King 2, and I don't remember exactly if he every took them back, because my parents still have that movie in their movie cabinet.

Once, at a Christmas family gathering in the 90s, Charlie decided he was a coffee connoisseur and was acting all high and mighty about how m uch milk and sugar was added to it and my dad and his brother added hot sauce to his cup. There is a picture commemorating this event.

Charlie's hair, example 2

Around the same time the snuff was falling out of his pocket, my dad picked it up one morning and enriched it with some rabbit turds. Charlie came back later that day with, "Man! You won't believe what happened! I offered my buddy some snuff and he took a pinch and put it in his mouth and spat it out and said, 'Man! This tastes like *&^$! Hahahahahahah!."

Once, in elementary school, I came home from school and couldn't find my sweet new pink bike anywhere. I had bought it for $75 with my paper route money and was distraught that it was gone. Turns out Charlie was running late to work and he "borrow" it to get to work faster. You know you are desperate when you ride you niece's pink bike to work at McDonald's.

Parts of his life were tragic.

Being born with fetal alcohol syndrome means that the birth mom drinks heavily during the pregnancy. Talk about hardship. It also means that a person is going to have a hard life, right from the womb. It causes developement, mental, social and psychological challenges. He was a foster child in my grandparents' home very early in his babyhood (it may be been before eight weeks.)

He had trouble keeping a job. He struggled with authority.

He could not obtain a license (although he knew how to drive a car and had at many instances). He had many girlfriends, and married once. That lady was pregnant with another man's baby (he was in prison), at the time but Charlie treated that sweet girl like his own daughter. When his wife became pregnant again, with twins, he was overjoyed, and also loved those girls deeply. Sadly, they too, were children of yet another man, and he and his wife separated and were on their way to divorce (but it was never made legal as of yesterday). He was a stay at home dad for those girls. He loved to grill. Once he had us over at his motor home for tons of delicious barbecued meat.

Charlie in Steelers gear, 2008

We always saw him at family gatherings. There, and specifically at gatherings with large amounts of family (except for funerals), he wore themed outfits. Steelers garb. There was never a Thanksgiving or Engle Reunion when the terrible towel (or dirty rag, depending on if it had been washed) didn't attend, along with golden sweats and a black and gold jersey. And beanie.

Once at the Engle reunion, he told us to call him Uncle "Chuckle", and called his shed his "hut."

My relationship with Uncle Charlie was complicated.

I have shied away from interacting with him in the past few years and had not seen him since Naisa's baby shower in August 2012. Charlie was known for his outspoken vocal opinions of women's appearances. Even relatives. I had heard more than enough from him. When I was an insecure teenager it was quicksand for my ego. Then when I found myself in college, it was irritating and demeaning. My sisters and I would ignore it roll our eyes. There haven't been any remembered abusive interaction besides that one time he slapped my hand in church when I accidentally dropped the offering plate. However, my mother told me in 2012 that when I was five, she found me sleeping in the same sleeping bag as him one morning. When I saw him again after that, I was twenty weeks pregnant, and had a small baby bump. He gave me an intrusive hug, and touched my belly (which I did not say he could touch and he did not ask) and he exclaimed, "You are going to be as big as a house." Everyone was staying at my grandparents' house that night and though sleeping in a different room, he was going to be sleeping in the basement. My mother noticed my discomfort and suggested that Dad also sleep in the basement and that comforted me. Charlie's boundaries were definitely askew.

Brianna, Charlie, Abby and Izzy, 2008

I'm humbled, I think, for someone I knew well, loved, but did not like, to pass away. I am a bit ambivalent. Is that wrong? It feels like it is because this is someone who means different hings for different people.

For my dad, he helped raise him. He worked hard to connect with him and be supportive of him. This is love! But this was not my role. I was a niece. I am a woman. I am my father's child. Charlie and I had a complicated relationship and I didn't need to be close to him. I needed distance. I didn't want him to have my cell phone number or know my address. I didn't want him interacting with my children. (I was not opposed to him meeting my children, but it never happened. )

He did not die peacefully. I heard from my dad that he had a seizure and choked on his vomit. This is not something I want to tell people about. Death isn't pleasant, especially before their 'time', though God knew his time. I don't even know if I want to tell people about it here, because it's a weird feeling having to address the fact that it was a dysfunctional relationship, and I don't want to say out loud that he was a hard person to be around.

His personality--he was a womanizer, had lots of things to say, but not much to do about them. He deeply desired to have a child of his own line--deeply desiring unconditional love. Calling relatives and asking for money to help with food, rent, etc, after spending the money on something else. There was too much pain in his life. I wonder how he processed it all. A birth mom who drank so heavily through her pregnancy that he was born with fetal alcohol syndrome. There's so much I dont' know or don't understand about his situation. I thin most of the Engles feel the same say. Why didn't he work on his issues with authority? Why didn't he work on getting better with his finances? I don't know. Because he was Charlie.

Charlie and Dathaniel Thanksgiving 2013

When we had our baby shower for Naisa in 2012, he brought his new girlfriend, Ashley. They were trying for a baby, he said, and they'd just lost one. Later they were pregnant and they did have a son. Dathaniel was born on June 11th, 2013. In August 2014, I received a letter from social services saying I was being contacted because I was a relative of Dathaniel and he was being put in foster care. And my heart was completely broken. This child may never know the Engle family. I want so badly to take this little boy in. There should always be this option. But Ben and I are also in a rough spot. But I want to be a momma to this little boy. A deep mama bear cam out when he was born and I heard that he was placed in foster care, that he couldn't live with his family because it wasn't safe there. He will be two this June. I feel like my window of opportunity has closed. I have never met this child. Just seen pictures. He has been in Foster care for almost eight months. No one wants to uproot a toddler from their living environment. I think it frustrates me the most when I think about all the GOOD families in the Engles. Is there not one who could have taken him?

I have know for awhile that I try to avoid the imagery and confrontation that comes with death. The last funeral I attended was in 2010--my grear-grandfather Engle--a man well lived. It was a joyous occasion with lots of remembering and not as much mourning, because he'd lived a good life and was with His Savior.

But I don't know about Uncle Charlie. Dad once said that Charlie struggled with "church" stuff. I don't know the answer why. There are a lot of questions unanswered that may never be answered here on this earth.

I hope HOPE! that he has a new body and is worshipping out Glorious LORD in heaven now. That's hard to think about. And it wasn't my role to be the one to encourage him to think about Christ... or was it? Maybe in a lifetime with less of the pain of reality that existed for him that spilled out into the rest of us.

I want so badly to not portray him in such a light. "Don't speak ill of the dead." But it is hard to think of times when I felt I could take him seriously, except when he was struggling--struggling with the reality that the twins he thought were his for such a long time were another man's children. I remember the phone call to Dad that I heard on the answering machine the night when Brenna died. He was having a hard time dealing with it. I knew it was hard too, but I didn't understand it like I do now, as a mother. When little Peili died, I felt it. I had to write then.
I remember being at Uncle Mike's house, doing a developmental study with Megan for school, when he got a call from Charlie who was frustrated because he couldn't see the girls--they were getting a divorce. I remember that, and the deep sorrow I felt. Divorce is something I'd neve wish upon anyone.

I have been writing this to process and to figure out in what way I've respected him. I wanted there to be some positive light, although sometimes in real life there aren't always positives. But I have realized it now. I respected his fierce love for those girls whose fathers were not present. He had a fierce desire for and love for children, which is why he wanted a child of his own. It was challenging for me to watch when he had such a child in those bad circumstances.
I also respected his desire-need to have a job. Even thought he was let go and fired again and again for various reasons, he still tried to get another one over and over again. And he was hired over and over again. That, my friends, is endurance. "Blessed is the man who endures his trials, for when he passes the test he will received the crown of life that God promised to those who love him." My memorization of James 1 and 2 thus far is making me think about this. Did Charlie believe in God"? I'm sure he did! Did he have good works too? I can think of some. Not all of his works were good, obviously, but isn't that the way it is with all of us? If one keeps the entire law, yet fails at one point, he is guilty of breaking it all. I write that for myself, as no one of us is a "bigger" or "worse" sinner than the other.

I am remembering now, when I was fifteen and just starting to write songs, I played some for Charlie and my Uncle jon. We were on our way back to Ohio from the beach that summer, and he said, "Yeah, me and some guys are putting together a band."
"What kind of a band?" I asked.
"Like insane clown posse. Yeah we got a recording coming up."
I rolled my eyes then and chuckle to myself now when I think about that interaction. It was classic Charlie, 'one-up-ing'. but I think that was his 'way' of teeling you he liked something. Like when I was twenty weeks prego and he touched my belly and said, "you are going to be as big as a house." Doesn't make it any less traumatizing, but its just how he worked.

Mom with Izzy and Abby, 2008

I remember when Charlie said he was learning Spanish at one of his jobs, or in the neighborhood he was living in. I thought that was great, although wary of whether or not it was a boast or a fact (this was often the question). But he spoke it and it was Spanish and it was something he was learning from another. What a gift to learn another language from a peer.

In conclusion, I would like to share a story that points to another essence of Charlie: great, but unrealistic ideas and no money to do them.
It was at the same visit that he said he (and some of the guys at the trailer park) were going to start a hot dog stand and sell hot dogs though the trailer park. He asked Grandpa for money so he could buy a portable hot dog stand or grill that his friend was selling.
"only $600!"
Grandpa's suggestion that he attach Uncle Joe's old three wheeled bike (which was brakeless, in thei shed) to his grill.