My Uncle Has Always Been There

Jonathan is a wonderful uncle, attentive, supportive, kind and firm, teaching new skills, buying reasonable presents, offering up his time to do kid friendly things.  He is the uncle I would wish for any child to have.

Uncle Jon reads to Sydney.

I am sad, though, because I know that Sydney knew another wonderful uncle and that the logistics of military life created a situation where she only saw the two of them together once - when she was seven weeks old.  So in her mind, her memory, I fear that there is only one uncle... the uncle who came home for Christmas every year until it all stopped in 2009 and the uncle who has now come to visit about once each six months since.

Sydney reads to Uncle Jon.

The confusion is natural... Uncle James and Uncle Jon do look a lot alike.  They have many of the same mannerisms.  Mostly, though, they took on the role of uncle in very similar ways.  James pushed Sydney to do more on her own in a very physical way.  Jon read to her a lot more.  But they both played.  They both spoke to her like a real person.  They both were willing to tell her "no."

Uncle Jon and his Mac.... this became a familiar sight at the house the past two weeks.

On the one hand, I know that means in a way, she won't really remember James.  But on the other hand, I think she will remember the things she did with him more vividly because she will have the new memories of Jonathan to hook on to those old memories.  I also know, without a doubt, that Sydney's relationship with Uncle Jon is so much stronger because she halfway remembers him being there for her first Christmas (which he really was) and then again at her second and third (those were really Uncle James).  For her, he never left.  James was the bridge between the Uncle Jon who came by for Christmas before he left for the Navy in 2006 and the Uncle Jon we got back just two years ago, in 2009.

Uncle Jon, Sydney and John Patrick

Sydney knows her Uncle James as a soldier who died for our country.  The uncle who plays with her and who gives her that somewhat serious "Sydney" when she is doing something she shouldn't... that's now Uncle Jon.  It's not fair and it's not right, but I really believe that if James were here to ask, he would be okay with being amalgamized (well, he would ask what that word meant first, but then he would be okay) into Jonathan if it meant a better relationship for Jon with his niece and nephew.

Saying good bye at Dairy Queen.

The real heartbreak in this Superman/Clark Kent relationship James/Jon had with Sydney isn't that she never saw them both at the same time.  The heartbreak is that the rest of the family clearly sees them as separate people and when we see pictures of Jonathan and Jeremy, we're all looking in between them, at the gap in the physical space, at the hole that was left.

Texas Stop Sign.  You don't get these in Japan.  (But you can apparently find them in Virginia, along with Cracker Barrel.)

We're looking for Sydney's Uncle James.