Suzanne’s Blog for 12/27/2022

 

 

Blog – Philip and Jim

 

 

At this time in 2020 my uncle’s partner of 30 plus years, died. Then mid-January of 2021 my uncle died.

I reflect on the amazing lives of these two adventurous men who touched me deeply in so many ways.
My uncle was a traveler and an adventurer from the time he got out on his own.

He went down the Amazon in a dug-out canoe before most would have dreamed of doing it. The trip was rustic and very hard. The food (because of the damp, wet, rainforest) consisted of rice and beans for 3 weeks. He would tell the stories and I would be fascinated by them regardless of how many times they were told.

He went to India and dunked into the Ganges River and watched the aesthetics do their bizarre tests of focus, strength, and body control.
He was endlessly curious of cultures and people. He was wild and easy to engage others in conversation when he was younger.

He was funny in a way that could make others burst out in uncontrolled laughter and his personal glee was infectious to be around.

He was drawn to the spiritual things in life and endlessly curious about energy, time, beliefs, and spirituality.

He would have transformative experiences of past lives while in historical places and truly lived this life as an extension of some of the other amazing lives he remembered.

He was notorious in all the good … and bad ways. He never asked permission … he just did what he wanted, and the consequences be dammed.
Because of this attitude … rarely did obvious things become a problem.
He believed he was above many things and in truth he seemed to be exactly that.

He was a rogue in the classic sense of the word. He was a comedian and a clever trickster. He was a storyteller and an obvious but endearing liar.

They say in our family there is always a black sheep in each generation. He was the one for his generation.

We could not help but adore him. He was fun to be around in his irreverent ways and comedic repartee.
As he aged, his humor became tinged with a darker tone and his desire to not operate within the parameters of normal society increased. He would not get dressed for anyone if you came to his home. He would walk around in his underwear and did not care about social protocols in his own home.

His connection to his family religion of Catholicism became strong even though he was in a gay relationship for decades with his partner.
Somehow the rules of religion that he did not agree with … he would just ignore.
Those beliefs did not matter to him.
He took what worked for him and let everything else go.
But he would never stop including other philosophies, religious affiliations, or the desire to understand other spiritual practices in his life.

Even in his death, he wanted to have part of his ashes under the Golden Gate Bridge, part of them in the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose (because of his donation of a sarcophagus with canopic jars to the museum), and the rest at Glacier Point in Yosemite.

He was an enigma. He was a constant contradiction.

He was a unique individual that would cast a spell on you and take you along for his ride as long as you could hang on.

I miss him terribly even though he was more and more challenging as he aged.

I miss him even though he left his estate in a terrible mess and after two years I am still trying to sort it all about.

I understand why he entrusted it to me and his partners daughter. He really could never have dealt with unraveling all the complex problems he created towards the end of his life.

But I must smile because he knew when to leave. Some part of him knew that the consequences of this extreme life were going to catch up to him and that he needed to leave before they did.

So, for him, his life was one of doing exactly what he wanted for as long as he could … and it worked.

Clearly, he had some good juju from other lifetimes that had accrued some very powerful merits that protected him in this life.

And it seems that … for him … in the end … the pieces that needed to be done … others would do anyway.
I take that truth to heart in many ways.

In the end, others will be in charge of the things that we could not let go of because they mattered to us. In the end, the memories we left behind will be our legacy.
In the end our choices will become stories passed down and changed with the generations.

~Suzanne Wagner~