Uncle Ted

Imagine this: it's 7:30 in the morning, New Year's Eve. Your husband is heading out the door, on his way to save the world. He's a cop: that's what they do, every day, in small ways...and occasionally in larger ways as well.
You've learned to live with that small, niggling voice that resides deep inside the spouses of all police officers. It still speaks to you, every now and again, after all these years; it's cursed with a vivid imagination, and mostly what it imagines is all manner of horror befalling your husband. A routine traffic stop that suddenly goes bad. An accident on the water. A domestic dispute wherein the guy decides to give the cop a little of what his wife's been getting. Such is the lot of the partners of cops.
Odds are that voice is pretty quiet, today. It's New Year's Eve, after all. You've got plans for tonight, once your husband's off shift.
He turns to you now, gives you a peck--amazing, how good that still feels after so many years of marriage. He says "I love you." Then he says "I don't feel so good."
Then he drops dead of a massive heart attack.

My Uncle Ted was an amazing man. If he wasn't smiling, a smile was always near to hand, and when fun was to be had, it was also to be shared. Of course, some of the fun was at my expense. For instance, every Christmas, he'd tell me Santa had a nice pink dress all picked out for me. The more I protested that I did not want a pink dress, the more he'd say that's what I really wanted. One year, he announced Santa was not getting me a pink dress.
"He's not?"
"No."
"Good. Because I don't want a pink dress."
"He's decided to get you a yellow dress instead."

If I did something to impress him, he'd say "not bad, for a little girl." And I learned young what "pull my finger" meant. In his case it meant run. Fast.

But it was the game we played all through my childhood--in fact all through my teens, too--that really epitomized Uncle Ted for me. The object of the game was simple: when going to his house, I had to sneak up on him and say "Hi, George!" before he could do the same to me. It was his house...he usually saw me coming. But not always. I think I managed to "George" him twice.

Ted Jackson lived in Parry Sound, which was paradise for me growing up. Going "up north" always meant fun in abundance. Ted, my aunt Dawna, and my cousins Terri and Todd were a big part of that fun. I remember games of road hockey played with Terri and her friends, scads of dinky cars I got to play with from Todd's collection, the piano in the basement I always made a beeline for, and once, unforgettably, sitting in the Jacksons' living room, reading a book called The Mystery of the Green Ghost that scared the almighty crap out of my eight-year-old self.
I remember wondering how somebody who lived in Parry Sound, Ontario, could ever get to be such a devout Chicago Blackhawks fan, and why anybody would ever want to be a Chicago Blackhawks fan.
But mostly what comes to mind when thinking about those childhood visits to Uncle Ted and his family is how welcome I always felt when I was there.

Ted spent much of his working life out on the Georgian Bay, patrolling around the 30,000 islands with the O.P.P's Marine unit. It's only fitting, then, that they named a marine rescue boat after him. The T.K. Jackson makes its rounds still. I'd like to think the spirit of my uncle Ted rides the waves with her.

Ted Jackson died in 1992. I never got the chance to say goodbye. I have been terribly remiss in not writing about him before now. That doesn't mean I haven't thought of him. I think of him often. I know it's years late, but the game we played demanded patience. And so...


Bye, George.

I miss you.