The last Austin brother

January 30, 1928 - August 20, 2008

This was a hard one. I wasn't ready to let Uncle Jerry go. I always thought I would have time to sit at his knee and listen again to the family history. I wanted to hear Uncle Jerry's version. I didn't get to hear enough.

Uncle Jerry loved family. He loved and knew the family history and the genealogy. Jerry was the youngest, the baby. He had 4 older brothers and two older surviving sisters. As a child he loved hearing his folks and aunts and uncles talk and he took it all in. He told me once that he didn't want to be the last child in the family to die. He wouldn't be able to bear that, he said. He wasn't the last to go. He left that to his sister, Frieda, who is my mother's age.

When the Austins got together, they sat up late. They talked until the wee hours. They held on. The Austins had come through rough times and they celebrated and appreciated the good times.

As a child, when my dad and his siblings got together at Gramma and Grandpa Austin's, we children knew it would probably be a late night. We knew we'd end up asleep on the floor or in Gramma's iron bed, 6 or 8 children, patchwork, on the bed. I think that is why even now, I love to listen to "talk" while I go to sleep. Now it is the TV or talk radio. Then it was the grownups visiting and laughing in the next room. Talk is comfort and security.

I bet Uncle Jerry, as a child, went to sleep in the warmth and comfort of the grownups talking. I hope he is sitting atthe kitchen table now, with his brothers and sisters, remembering the good times.