Whatever Happened To "Uncle" Bob...

Great Auntie Kay had two daughters. The eldest was Wendy. I'm pretty sure she was a change of life baby. At least, I know her crazyass self changed the life of OUR family. Not only did she get some cookoo from Auntie Kay, she came with a whole bag full of her own. Holy Sheesh!! Wendy was about 17 (?) years older than me. Once when my brothers and I were staying with Auntie Kay for a few days, Wendy and my eldest brother got into a fight about what they wanted to watch on T.V. Doug wanted to watch Star Trek...Doug lived for Star Trek. Cousin Wendy wanted to watch Lost in Space. Turmoil ensued. They both stood guard at the T.V. like sumo, and wrestled over changing the channel. Back and forth, back and forth...knock down drag out shiz! Finally, Wendy lost her mind (worse than usual). She began screaming at the top of her lungs and would not stop. She ran through the house and began breaking Auntie Kay's antiques, ripping down the curtains, kicking chairs until they went flying...then she went to the kitchen and came out welding a butcher knife. A butcher knife!!! Very simply, she wanted to watch Lost In Space, or she wanted to kill my brother Doug. Personally, I wanted to watch I Dream of Jeanie...but I wasn't saying NOTHING! Needless to say, we ended up watching Lost In Space.



Wendy went to take a lot of "rests" herself. I always wondered if she "rested" at the same place Auntie Kay "rested".



Side note: Auntie Kay had gone to "rest" for over two years after the birth of Wendy. Auntie Kay's husband Uncle Jim (whoa! there's another story in itself) took care of Wendy with the help of my Nana for those years. No doubt Auntie Kay NEEDED to rest before tackling Wendy.



Anyway, one time after Cousin Wendy came from a lengthy "rest", she showed up with her new boyfriend, Bob. "Uncle" Bob, they called him to us. (Now, how he became an "Uncle" remains questionable... as many "Uncles" do ;). Regardless, she and "Uncle" Bob had met at the "rest" place. There was a family gathering one day to introduce us all. If this wasn't a freak show to beat all freak shows, then I don't know what a freak show is.... And by now, I think we all know that I DO! He was very confrontational. He was very loud. He had a very big uni-brow and CRAZY eyes. Auntie Kay and Wendy began to fight...I think it was about his bad manners... I stayed on high alert, hovering around the telephone waiting to dial the operator for the police. Mom ended up getting us out of the house soon after...



Time passed. I heard Uncle Bob and Wendy had married and moved far away. But, as my luck would have it, Thanksgiving was coming, and they would be traveling to join us for our feast at Auntie Kay's. Well, the feast part I was jazzed about. After all, Auntie Kay WAS a gourmet chef! (Butter, butter, cream, lard, bacon, butter... you get the idea...basically in today's world, she would have SHIT on Paula Dean.) Finally Thanksgiving arrived. No Wendy and Uncle Bob. We would wait a little longer...and a little longer.... They were taking a Greyhound bus from somewhere...perhaps the bus was late? Uncle Jim waited for the call from the station so he could go fetch them. He was the calmest of all. The call, however, would not come on that Thanksgiving. In fact, Auntie Kay would not hear from Wendy for several days. She finally showed up at their house unannounced...



Wendy was a fright!! She would go on to unravel a story unlike any you will ever hear... While on their way to Thanksgiving, the bus had made a scheduled stop in some ho-bunk little town. "Uncle" Bob had gone to use the restroom earlier, but had never returned to his seat. Wendy knocked on the door over and over again, with no response. At the stop, the driver finally went back to assist. When they eventually pried the door open, there was "Uncle" Bob... he had removed his shoelaces from his shoes, somehow knotted them around the sink...and his neck...and had hung himself...



O.K....wait just a minute...WHAT?? That's right... "Uncle" Bob, dead in the back of the Greyhound (I hate Greyhound buses). According to Wendy, she left the bus, and stayed in ho- bunk for a few days, where she had "Uncle" Bob buried, and then continued on home. WTF?? She moved back in with her Mom and Dad. Ho Hum...no big deal... Life goes on...(Huh??).



So, one day I'm at Auntie Kay's and we're cooking in the kitchen. Wendy is glaring at me all day. I always thought she was a little jealous of me, for some reason... Anyway, she comes at me in the kitchen, when Auntie Kay isn't there...and I'm all alone with her... she corners me up by the refrigerator... she has a smile on her face that would make a zombie run the other way..."Do you want to end up like Bob?", she asks... and then she laughs...and laughs...and laughs...



To this day nobody knows what really happened to "Uncle" Bob. His family made several attempts to find him... but Wendy was away on an extended "rest", and she couldn't ever quite remember the name of the town where she had put HIM to "rest"...



Odd how life works... several years later, Wendy herself would go missing, mysteriously. She's not been seen since either. The last person who saw her was Uncle Jim. Dropped her off at a bookstore in Berkeley, he would say, and she never showed up when he went back to get her. Uncle Jim would just shake his head whenever the subject came up... He would just shake his head, with a calm voice and maniacal look in his eyes....Uncle Jim would shake his head and say, "It's best they're gone, those two. It's best they're gone. I never really liked Bob."



Every time Auntie Kay would have me sit at that musty Ouija board with her and try to channel either of them, the movey thing would fly off the table. FLY off the table. Over, and over again! And her crystal would swing, round and around, faster and faster...even though her hand seemed perfectly still...



Years later, while visiting Auntie Kay in the hospital, I saw an orderly pushing an empty gurney down the hall... he turned to look at me just before rounding the corner... the smile, the uni-brow, the crazy eyes... it was "Uncle" Bob! I freaked the F out!! I ran into Auntie Kay's room... She was hysterical... "Get me out of here!", she pleaded... "It's Bob...he's here! No one believes me!!... I can't breath..I'm suffocating!!"...



They wouldn't let Auntie Kay come home that night. She wouldn't come home for a while. But I would have a strange dream soon after... "Uncle" Bob would be pushing a gurney down the lawn of a cemetery...This time it wasn't empty... I would run to catch him and pull back the sheet... and there would be Auntie Kay with a shoelace around her neck...eyes bulging...and sitting in a lone chair, in front of a hole, would be Wendy...laughing...and, laughing...