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Monday, September 10, 2007

Remembering an uncle who raised seahorses (still miss you Uncle Bob)


It's hard to believe my uncle, Robert (Bob) Falt has been gone a year.

He actually passed away a year ago yesterday (September 9, 2006), but i actually didn't get the news until the next day, right before i went to an appearance at the Milwaukee County Zoo...which was somewhat appropiate. My uncle loved animals...he bought a puppy 4 months before his death...how optimistic was that?!

My mom (his sister) and i visited him at his new apartment in Tucson, Arizona last April...after he defiantly checked himself out of a nursing home he had been staying in (he suffered terribly from poor health due to diabetes). Yet, about 6 months before he died, he decided he wasn't going to spend whatever time he had left in a home and out he went...ironically, he did bring one thing home from the nursing home...a new love for small dogs...because up til then, my uncle who could keep anything alive, including real live seahorses (in his basement no less!) was a big dog lover. He was also a smoker which prompted my mom to make a deal with him...stop smoking and we will get you a puppy, because that's what you do for someone whose dying...you get him a puppy, right?!

So basically, my mom and my uncle pored over the newspaper ads looking for shiatzu's (which was the nursing home mascot at the place he stayed at). I was the killjoy who kept questioning my mom (in private of course) "what the heck are you doing, he's gonna have a dog peeing all over the place while he's suffering from cigarette withdrawal..."

No one listened to me of course, and one day after we got to Tuscon, we ended up with a puppy named Buddy...who totally ignored my mom and me and went straight to my uncle like he was a big chew toy...which unfortunately, he was...my uncle had no feeling on his feet and legs and i kept begging him to wear socks and slippers so the dog wouldn't chew on him...but, my uncle just smiled at me and told me to quit sassing him and let him enjoy his dog...which i finally did.

We later found out that Buddy was at his side with him when he died, and that he brought my uncle an incredible amount of happiness at the end of his life. I did mention he raised seahorses didn't i?

Last year i bought some bearded german iris's which i planted in his honor but they didn't bloom this year(no surprise, i suck at gardening), so i did something else i thought i'd never do...and no it wasn't seahorses...they don't even sell those anymore because their almost impossible to keep alive...i thought i'd start small...a goldfish. That's right, a single solitary goldfish...i think i actually kept one alive for 3 days once...but, today in memory of my uncle Bob, i'm going to attempt to do something i've never been able to do in my life...raise a goldfish. I thought i'd start small, work my way up...
a goldfish this year, maybe a shark or electric eel next year...just kidding...i think i'll probably have my hands full with the goldfish. I named him Buddy. I don't think my uncle would mind.