WHEN I LAID MY BURDEN DOWN [ONE OF TWO]

Uncle Ben was “hangin' in there”-- whatever the hell that meant. It was the doctor’s favorite explanation. Why professional physicians have to talk like gas station attendants, I’ll never know.
“How much longer is he going to be ‘hangin' in?’” I asked.
The doctor laughed. “I really couldn’t tell you. He was supposed to be dead last year.”
I went home depressed, and rang the doorbell of my own house.
Uncle Ben opened it, looking fresh and rosy.
“Howdy!” he said cheerfully.
“Hey, Uncle Ben.”
I walked by him into the living room and switched on the TV. Uncle Ben looked healthier than most 20-year-olds these days. Yet the medical rumor was, he had full-blown cancer. Why couldn’t he just die, for god’s sake? Well, you can’t blame a dying man for not dying-- or can you? I just didn’t know what was right and wrong anymore. The line had become blurred and complex and I was just too weary to make moral decisions.
Uncle Ben planted himself beside me on the sofa.
“Go to channel 25,” he said.
“Why?”
“There’s a show about Alaska on.”
I looked at him. “So?”
“It’s about wildlife in Alaska.”
I couldn’t believe it. “Ok, let me just see if there’s anything better on.”
“There isn’t,” he said. “I already checked.”
“Let me just--”
“Ervin!” my wife called from the kitchen. “Let Uncle Ben watch his show.”
I handed the dying man the remote control.
“You’ll love it,” he said, excitedly switching to channel 25. “How some of these animals survive in such an environment is fascinating.”
I wandered into the kitchen.
“Honey, really!” my wife said. “Uncle Ben’s dying. Why do you have to make everything so much harder for him?”
I sighed. “I just don’t understand why he wants to watch a show about wildlife in Alaska! I mean, what sort of a grown man does that? Children watch that kind of stuff, but men his age are supposed to-- I don’t know-- watch pornography or something.”
“If it makes him happy, let him watch his little show.”
“What about me? I want to be happy, too.”
“Well you’re not dying, are you?”
I laughed. “Honey, you’re making about as much sense as a tablespoon.”
“Erve! Out! I’m trying to cook.”
I walked back into the living room where Uncle Ben was awestruck at the majesty of a polar bear. He said something about it, and I said, “yeah.” I walked out into the backyard where I decided to stand until dinner was ready. After five minutes, I changed my mind, and went inside to watch the Alaska show.

Uncle Ben was content. He made the process of dying a cozy one, filled with quiet days watching animal shows, golfing, taking long baths and wandering through our house with fancy drinks my wife prepared for him. He seemed utterly ready to take the leap into the white clouds of paradise. And so was I, but it just did not happen. He had moved in with us in January so that he wouldn’t have to die alone. It was supposed to be a matter of days according to a certain specialist in a lab coat. It was now August and he was still alive and kicking. Everywhere I went in the house there was Ben. He took up religion and became a radical Christian within a matter of days. We had to hang up a cross that he bought from some thrift store in the living room. It was ugly-- a large ceramic piece of evidence of the ‘50s. But my wife was delighted that Ben had found solace in his dark days, so the cross became a permanent fixture.
“How the hell am I going to keep my dinner down?” I complained to her. “Can’t we at least convince him to buy a simple, black cross?”
She gave me a distressed look. “Honey, how can you even think about your dinner when your uncle is dying in front of your nose?”
“He’s not dying-- that’s the whole point! He’s going to outlive us all.”
“Oh, Erve, you’re disgusting!”
“Well, it’s true!”
“You’re just jealous!”
“Sure-- he’s the healthiest bastard in town.”
She rolled her eyes. “Ben is a dying man, and we are going to grant him whatever makes it easier for him. You can be thankful he didn’t ask for a picture of Adolf Hitler in the living room, because I would have let him hang it up!”
She had a valid point. How would I ever have explained a portrait of Hitler to guests? I decided to look on the sunny side of life and appreciate the fact that it was only a brown ceramic cross the size of Russia hanging on our wall.

By June, I was frustrated and felt it was time to complain again. I had restrained myself admiringly up until then, but I felt I could no longer hold out under the growing religious zest of Uncle Ben. Plus, he couldn’t decide on a specific branch of Christianity-- he mingled them all up mercilessly and cluttered the place with everything he could lay his hands on. One night at dinner, as I was about to attack my steak with tears of joy running down my cheeks and the warm smell of the meat digging mercilessly through my nose, Uncle Ben grabbed the fork out of my hand and insisted we pray before we touched the food. I looked over at my wife in outrage. Surely, she would not allow this kind of nonsense after having slaved over a hot stove all day!
I was ready to strike into battle at a nod of her head to defend the worthy cause she had sacrificed her afternoon for. I was ready to wrestle my uncle to the ground and threaten him into obedience with the knife. I was ready to do honor for this lovely piece of tender, warm, red meat on my plate. My eyes gleamed in romantic heroism as I looked over at Margie. Yet she ignored me completely.
“You’re very right, Ben,” she said.
My spirit was broken. I looked down in dejection, a man whose will to live had been all but stamped out-- a sensitive soul robbed of his passion, his purpose and his will to endure.
Ben folded his hands and we listened to him ramble on about this, that and the other thing for a good while-- it took about fifteen minutes before we finally heard “amen.” By that time the delicious warmth of my steak had disappeared. What I now saw before me was only a hard piece of dead cow. I knew I had lost my religion thoroughly at that point. Yep, there was nothing up there I wanted anything to do with. God and I were strangers. In fact, if you looked at it very objectively, let’s say from an innocent Hindu viewpoint, you’d notice that all you get for turning your soul over to the Christian God is a harp and a patch of cloud. Whereas if you sell your soul to the devil, at least he’ll teach you how to play guitar. In fact, he’ll teach you just about anything for your soul. It’s usually a fair bargain.
The next evening I walked into the kitchen and watched nervously for a few minutes as my wife violently chopped lettuce to senseless little bits. Taking a deep breath, I began to explain to her just why Uncle Ben was a subtle tool of the devil, used like a celebrated surgeon uses the scalpel. I made long-winded philosophical points with grace and exquisite taste, but Margie seemed to find the mere existence of me a nuisance.
“Look, dear,” I said eventually, “Uncle Ben is embarrassing the whole concept of death and its solemn purpose here on Earth. Don’t you see that? He’s turning it into some cheap Disney World thrill ride!”
I thought I had made a very striking point, but it seemed my wife didn’t think so. She only shook her head and labeled me a primitive, self-adoring anarchist. I found that sort of intriguing and truly perplexing.
“Why an anarchist?” I asked.
She just rolled her eyes and ordered me out of the kitchen, which meant that she didn’t have a clue in the world what her mouth was pumping out.
CLICK HERE TO READ PART TWO OF WHEN I LAID MY BURDEN DOWN.