Uncle Ronny

Uncle Ronny—Image by anonymous.

Uncle Ronny 

Uncle Ronny. There is something about uncles; you don’t meet them for the first time. They just exist—like shadows, always lingering somewhere in the background.  

But for Uncle Ronny, it isn’t like that. With him, it feels like there is a moment, a place—a first meeting that mattered. A day when his face stood out from the blur of relatives. A day when I saw him, really met him. 

I try to place the time, the moment—but it keeps slipping away. Like a word at the tip of my tongue that I can’t quite taste. I feel like this story won’t be whole if I don’t find it. If I don’t place it for you. 

Some memories are like that—always near but never close enough to hold. 

If I should place a time on it, a moment upon it, it must go far back—and it gets blurry along the way. I remember home, I remember childhood. I remember a young teen coming home for visits over the weekend. 

That young teen would be Uncle Ronny. He had come from the village to a small town. This small town is where my parents, my sisters, and I lived—a small family. His parents had sent him to attend a prestigious high school that just happened to be in our neighborhood. 

I was a small child then, my sisters were even smaller, too young to remember where this story starts—my side of it, if there should be sides, and there are always sides to every story. 

His attending that school—in our small town, in our neighbourhood—that’s the first vivid memory I have of him. The first time I remember coming in touch with Uncle Ronny. He would come for visits on weekends. My parents were always welcoming and would have been heartbroken if he didn’t. 

From the moment we were introduced to him, my sisters and I started looking forward to the weekends, waiting for him to come around eagerly.  

Very fast, we had grown fond of him—his jokes, his jolliness, his ever-friendly attitude. It did not take long for us to see him as a sort of playmate--an older brother. 

And it was not just us. My parents too. Uncle Ronny was not just a relative they looked forward to seeing on weekends. Quickly, they had loved his cheerfulness. He became part of the family—a child to love and guide here and there. 

When holidays would come around, when they broke off, Uncle Ronny would be around home for a few weeks before heading back to the village. 

Those few weeks of him being home remain etched in my mind. His day would start as early as 6 a.m. By the time we woke up, he would be done with most of the house chores. The house cleaned, the backyard swept, and tea already simmering.  

Despite being in his teens, he was never one my parents had to tell what to do. He knew what had to be done and would just do it. 

When not around, my parents would get chatty about him—such a hardworking, self-driven boy. They adored him and would look forward to the next time he would be coming. 

My sisters and I adored him. He was a perfect charm, a darling, and a sweetheart to be around. We found him amusingly smart for our childish questions about this, about that.  

When the questioning was done, we would be all over him for playtime. 

But time never stops for anything. A few school terms turned into a year and then a second year. Uncle Ronny kept up, coming over for weekends—a charm to my siblings and me and always being handy to my parents when it was holiday time. 

I think it was about the second or third year of his high school, it gets fuzzy but right around there. One day, I remember waking up to voices. They were coming from our living room. It was early morning. Uncle Ronny’s Dad had travelled from the village and that morning he was talking to my parents.  

It was not the usual cheery voice of Uncle Ronny’s dad. This one was disenchanted and laced with disappointment. My parents spoke in hushed tones trying to come down the man. What was wrong? I was confused. 

Uncle Ronny had been summoned from school. He was there, sitting quietly. Again, what was wrong, I was confused.  

Uncle Ronny had joined some bad peer groups and had taken an indecent habit of drink alcohol. That is what was wrong about that morning. His dad was furious and was not having. 

Uncle Ronny was his first born, his first son, a line of siblings cued behind him. They looked up to him. His achievements so far, including being part of a very prestigious school at that point, his charm, agility of his mind and hard work were all points of inspiration to them just as they were to us. 

Up to this moment, he had picked up a path, walked it and had done it brilliantly. What he was doing at that point, the drinking habit was stupid and awful. His dad was not having it. The moment he received the reports, he had jumped right away into the morning bus that busy some morning. 

Something about Uncle Ronny’s dad, he was a disciplinarian, hard handed and notoriously nonsensical. When he came that morning, he came not just armed with words, but sleeves rolled, ready to exorcize the no sense kind of behaviour out of his son. 

So, when he had said what had to be said—rebuked and reminded Uncle Ronny of where he came from and the goals he had been wired for in life, he pulled out his cane. This was to make sure the information said was duly hammered home. 

A few strokes, a few slaps did the job that morning. My parents espouse the same belief, you don’t spare the rod when rising a child, my sisters and I have stories on that. However, that morning they played the calm down role. 

On my part, I was a child, what did I know? I knew alcohol and substance abuse was bad, my parents had made sure of that. And despite being young, I had seen a few examples of people in our neighbourhood that had been ruined by the same. So, I had a sense and understood the dad’s fears for his son. 

However, that morning it was more about what Uncle Ronny represented to my sisters and me. He was a figure of inspiration to us—I had never seen him being openly rebuked that way. He was my elder and I felt genuinely embarrassed on his behalf. But really, I was unusually concerned for him, I did not want to see him go that way.  

Through the whole ordeal, he had remained quiet. I think he sensed his father’s disappointment and in some way, understood where it came from. He looked remorseful and seemingly took on the rebuking and stroking as a simple comeuppance for his unbecoming actions. 

However, despite the strokes and the rebuking words from his dad that fateful morning, the reports never truly stopped. They continued to trickle through.  

My parents took on a parenting role when he would come around—talking to him, counselling him, and when needed, rebuking him. Whatever they said to him, he took it on as a child would, never talking back or seeming upset by them. I think, he understood the concern. 

But he only got entrenched deeper into the unforgiving habit. 

And yet his charming character remained unblemished by the dubiousness of his drinking activities. Still, he played with my sisters and me--kept up on cheer, banter, smart conversations, and still woke up early in the mornings to run house errands in school holidays. 

He did not change. When we started attending nursery school, he would sometimes drop us off at school on our dad’s small motorcycle—Machala, we called it. It was small, squeaky, and noisy, making everyone turn when it passed. 

Soon, high school was done, and Uncle Ronny was gone. 

At first, I missed him so much and looked forward to his return. By then, I did not know much about the schemes and levels of study involved in education. To me, he had finished school, and I really did not know or inquire where he had gone next. 

Perhaps, I thought he had moved back to the village; the memory gets fuzzy. All I know is that after some years, I moved on, as children do—distracted by new things, new friends, and the passing of time. 

But then, one day, he returned to our small town. I was elated by the news. Time had passed; I had finished nursery school and was halfway through primary school. 

When Uncle Ronny returned, he returned as a journalist. Apparently, he had not just left, he had gone on to pursue further education in the city. 

In no time, he found a job as a news anchor at a local radio station in our small town. He rented a small apartment in the town suburbs. And just like that, we were back to the old days. 

He began coming home almost every weekend again. This time as a working man, he did not just come bearing good old stories and jokes, he would also bring bread and sugar for my parents and sweets for my sisters and me. 

When he was done playing and fooling around, he would take a seat in the shed, especially with my dad, to pass the evening. 

Sadly, Uncle Ronny had now become a full time alcoholic. He drank every day, without pause. Now, as an adult, he had the luxury of freedom. The chances of him ever stopping had grown slim. 

The effects of alcohol were slowly starting to wear and mark his face. There were scars on his cheekbones, on his forehead--scars obtained from falling and knocking things when drunk. His lower lip was starting to color with a red patch and his eyes were losing all color, becoming wide with white. 

When he came home for visits, he would go to great lengths to mask the signs of alcohol that had begun to etch themselves onto him. He dressed sharp, doused in cologne strong enough to wrestle with the stench of liquor.  

He was struggling to look like his old self before my parents, before us. But his old self was fast crumbling away, and no amount of scent or smart dressing could feign that picture. 

However, nothing could unhinge his great character—his charm, his cheerfulness, his charisma, his quick wit, and regard for people. My parents did not give up, especially my dad. When he came home, he would find time to talk to him, even rebuke him if needed.  

Sometimes, I think it pained him more than anyone else to see him go that way, particularly due to the special bond he had with Uncle Ronny’s dad. 

When Uncle Ronny started working on the radio, I would glue myself to it, rush through the local stations at the top of the hour—not for the news, just to hear him, just to hear his cheerful voice get serious, reading the news. 

There was something to his voice—a familiar warmth and cheer I knew in person. It made me proud. I knew that guy. Someone on the radio knew me. My heart would swell, and when I met friends, I would brag. 

Time went by, and Uncle Ronny’s visits became less frequent. It was around that time I moved on to a boarding school for my high school. It became hard for us to cross paths as often as we had done in the past, especially with me not being home. 

The next time we crossed paths was at a funeral. His grandfather—a great-granddad to me—had passed on. It was a sad moment. 

However, I was transfixed by Uncle Ronny. The way he made people feel comfortable, the way he moved with ease, welcoming people to the home village and making sure they felt at home. What wasn’t there to admire? 

Uncle Ronny gave a speech on behalf of us, the grandchildren—the way he spoke, played with words and language, moving and working the crowd of mourners. Words cannot fully express how inspired I was. I wanted to be him in that moment. 

I was inspired, but I was also overtaken by sadness. In that moment, I saw him for what he could be, for what he could have been. I saw a greatness that had been left untouched and unexplored, now drowning in the pity of addiction. From then on, I think I felt more pity for him. And yet, that small glimpse of greatness I’d seen became a point of inspiration in my life. 

Sadly, that was the last time I would see that glimpse of greatness in him. After the funeral, it all faded back to the dullness of addiction. 

The next time we met, I was nearing the end of my high school, soon joining university. He had been chased out of his small apartment in town. He could not pay his rent, and he had come to live at home. 

Uncle Ronny had been overtaken by the shadow of his addiction. He had a hangover most of the time. He was crumbling to pieces—and fast. 

At first, my dad offered him the guest room in the main house. However, he would come home late every night. He would come home drunk, shouting, and banging doors. My dad could not have it. He moved him out of the guest room to the boys’ quarter. 

The boys' quarter was a small room, cluttered and filled up like a forgotten storage shed, where dust settled on memories that were never given a chance to breathe. 

He lived there—in that cluttered boys' quarter. He lived there without remorse for himself—his great intellect and gifts buried beneath the clutter, like relics of a life that could have been. He lived there like one truly lost, a man whose reputation had vanished long before he did. I could not believe it. That is when we knew—truly knew—that there was no coming back. 

When he drank this time, he would constantly exude a bad mood—irritable and hostile. I think he was angry because he had found no return and had reached a point where he had fully given in to the unforgiving grip of addiction. 

After a few months of living at home, he lost his job. They could no longer have him. He was always late, and they could not rely on a drunkard. By this time, due to his behavior, he had moved from one radio station to another in our small town. 

Then he started to lose his faculties—talking to himself when alone, erratically. 

One morning, he woke up in a very bad mood. He had been drinking the previous night. He got grumpy, arguing with himself. Then, he picked his clothes from his room, put them in the backyard. He was going to torch them. But my dad found him. 

When he tried to stop him, Uncle Ronny shot back with words, saying he wanted to fight my dad. Dad was not having it—he walked off silently. When he returned, he came back with some strong men from the trading center in our village before he could put his clothes to the torch. 

These strong men gathered him up. They put him behind my dad’s pickup. He drove straight to the nearby police station. They later picked him up and brought him back home. Uncle Ronny was remorseful and apologized. 

However, remorseful as he was, he just carried on from where he had left off, drowning himself in more alcoholic misery. He looked broken, and his charm was fading fast. He had few sober days where he really came alive. 

I think deep down he was suffering and depressed. He had not given up on himself; he had struggled perhaps all those years to regain himself and had simply failed terribly at it. 

His dad reached out to my dad when he heard Uncle Ronny was now at our home and with no job. He wanted him to travel back home to the village. Perhaps he thought he could transform him or just have him under his care at his own expense. There is a pain that we only watch and cannot explain—the pain of a father losing their son to addiction. 

The last time I saw Uncle Ronny, I had come home from school to treat a small ailment. I saw what he had become, and it was painful to watch. Once my great source of inspiration was washing away like that. 

When I was heading back to school, I don’t remember how, but he walked with me. We stopped somewhere in town. He had no money, but the magnanimity of his heart could not just let me go like that. He pulled out a few old notes and bought me food to go back along with, to escape the mundane of school meals. I think that is the most generous thing I have ever seen someone do. 

It is not just that one time, over the years I had tasted sweets, worn his clothing, and received sandals and perfumes from him. 

I related to him a lot. It pained me to see him wither away like that. To see him reduced to the kind of wasted alcoholics I had grown up seeing in the neighborhood was disheartening. 

When I reached school, I had planned to write him a letter. To tell him that over the years he had been my inspiration, that I had secretly looked up to him. To encourage him. To tell him that I understood at least in part his pain and that I missed who he used to be. I was supposed to do that after the completion of my final exams when I got home. 

It was in 2013. It was my final year of high school. Uncle Ronny woke up one morning. He told my parents he was going to the city. That was the last time my parents heard from him, the last time anyone knew of his whereabouts. 

It has now been more than ten years since that day. No one in our family has spotted him anywhere. 

I had wanted to write him a letter. Now all I have is the hollow echo of a sad story. 

EzroniX Short Stories.