My Uncle Wayne’s memorial service was held today at Columbia Park in North Portland.
I thought that I was to deliver a family message. I worked on this message for many, many hours, but it was not to be shared with the fragmented remnants of this family, or with his larger community of remaining friends.. I do not remember ever feeling so unimportant, but if I tried, I am sure that I could find several comparable situations in other settings. His daughter Caryn is a sociopath,, and there was lots of crazy making communication during Wayne’s dying phase, and up to this memorial event. I call this “second injury” to me, and I have no desire to ever participate in the Portland contingent of family insanity again.
Wayne Kenneth Henry
This is a great day to be alive, isn’t it?
I must apologize, I forgot to wear my black suit and tie. I notice a few others who also forgot to wear their grieving clothes, too!.
I want to take this opportunity to thank Carla for asking me to be a speaker today. The writing of this talk has helped me to get in touch with my most difficult emotions. I still can’t quite get my mind around the death of Uncle Wayne, and a 66 year era in my life. I read this talk several times to Sharon, in hopes that it would reduce my crying response, but we will see.
Carla, is there a time limit for how long I can speak? I am my father’s son, and I might talk long enough to put everyone into a stupor. Please try to hold each other up, just in case, OK?
What a great setting, this park has many memories for many of us. Pam and I used to play here and swim at the pool when we were young. I met my first girlfriend at this park when I was fifteen.
First and foremost, our condolences to all who grieve, and share in our family’s great loss.
In the paraphrased words of Kate Wolf, and the lyrics of her classic song “Give Yourself To Love”,
Kind Friends all gathered round, There is something that I would say,
That what brings us all together here, has blessed us all today.
Wayne’s love has created a circle, that holds us all inside,
Where strangers are as family, and loneliness can’t hide.
Wayne was born to Beatrice and Kenneth Henry in 1937. He had one sister Corinne, who was Pam’s and my mother. They were born with Native American and Oregon Trail pioneering heritage. Wayne, our grandparents, our mother, and Pam especially enjoyed our occasional family reunions from 1963 through the last one, which might have been in the early part of this century. There were 100’s of people who shared our common heritage, and these were major social and educational events.
Wayne’s parents were like Gods to me when I was young.
While growing up, It was healing and peaceful for me to be exposed to their loving influences..
Our grandparent’s spiritual, moral, and ethical training really provided a guiding influence to their children.. We all benefited from Corinne and Wayne’s upbringing, and their own unique developed styles, as well.
Corinne loved her little brother, who was seven years her junior, and watched out for him as he grew up.
They were not from a prosperous household, so mom went to work while still in high school, to help pay for teenager expenses.
She would give Wayne money for movies and popcorn,
They talked frequently, and visited with each other often throughout their lives, until mom’s death. and Wayne remembered her love for him and the family.,
My father first met Wayne when he was about 11 years old, and I have a photograph of them together at about that time. Wayne remembered that grandpa required that my father mow his yard before he could take our mother out.
When mom showed me Uncle Wayne’s Eagle Scout award photograph, I was a boy scout of 13 years of age. I felt inadequate and a bit jealous, because I knew that I had no interest in earning a community service merit badge, which was required to be promoted from a Star and Life scout, to the exalted Eagle status. Well, this turkey never flew like an eagle, but I finally did learn how to fly.
He was the best example of a good man that I ever had the privilege of knowing.
He was the guy that just enjoyed being with people, and his life was a testimony to that fact.
There were no family members judged too harshly or exiled, he just wanted those that he loved to love each other.
He was an upbeat, optimistic, humorous man, who loved being alive, and sharing his joy with friends, family and the community.
I loved the stories he would tell about all of his exploits, road tours and adventures with friends and family. My parents joined with him on some trips, but I never did. Most of my experience with my uncle revolved around our grandparent’s home, his own home, our parents home, and then our home, and an occasional dinner outing at a restaurant.
My first memory of Uncle Wayne was when I was about 2 and ½ years old, and I might have been in sagging diapers at the time. He was standing on grandma’s porch asking me if I needed to go to the bathroom.
He was always such a helpful man, though I am sure he did not help with my change of diaper!
My last memory of Wayne was in February of this year, while he was preparing to visit Carla at her home in Auburn, California for the last time.
I don’t think that Wayne ever lived more than a mile from my grandparents in his adulthood, other than in his university days…
After his marriage to Roxanne, in which Pam was the flower girl at age 4, Wayne bought a piece of property near the boat dock in the neighborhood of our home on Steamboat Way in West Linn, and his family almost became our neighbors prior to 1964. The great flood of 1964 displaced many from our neighborhood, with my parents moving to higher ground in Milwaukie in 1965. and Wayne also selling his riverside lot.
Wayne was always genuinely interested in everybody he was with. I always felt listened to, and loved by him. I loved my father, but I did not want to grow up to be exactly like him, I wanted Grandpas spirituality, and Wayne’s higher emotional IQ, and his friend, family and community oriented outlook.
As a kid I never got my ass whipped when I was around Wayne, or my grandparents, so they both were very appreciated and loved and respected by me for their peaceful , not punitive, guidance. Maybe I only remember the positive things about Wayne. But I don’t remember ever hearing him yell, nor be aggressive in his teaching of his children. I know that I never saw him angry, though I did see him in anguish a few times during my mother’s death, Roxanne’s decline and death, and Brian’s sometimes unhealthy behavior that resulted in his early death.
Being an isolated and lonely boy growing up I so much wanted to be more like Uncle Wayne than I wanted to be myself, but, hey, we all learn to love our self somehow, or we die young and with great despair.
Wayne and grandpa were my primary male role models, though not because of their athleticism. Grandpa was always so supportive of me, though he rarely got out of his recliner in his later years. Wayne’s early eating adventures, especially at those all you can eat restaurants were almost legendary. I think that I got my appetite for food, and my marathon ability from my father’s side, for sure. An aside to this was grandma was so concerned about Wayne’s weight and diabetes that in 1990 she bought him a bicycle to ride around this very park. I don’t know if Wayne ever rode it , though..
Friends
Wayne carried many of his grade school and high school friends all the way through life. I met several of them over the years, and they were all such good people. I will just briefly mention Dick and Cheryl Russell who both passed away way too young. I saw them so often that they felt like part of the family, and, in fact, attended the party after my first wedding in 1979. My second wedding, this time to Sharon, was missed by everyone except Grandma, because Carla and Bjorn coincidentally chose the exact same day to get married in July of 1994. Who’d have thought?
I heard so much about Snook, and I know that I met him when I was a kid, and also later in life, too. Dick Merck became our friend, too, after the passing of our father. Wayne, Jane, Sharon, Dick, Pam, and I shared a wonderful dinner together in 2018 after the sale of our parents’ home. We ate a last supper, of sorts, at Tad’s Chicken and Dumplings, which closed shortly afterwards. .It hit me kind of hard when Dick passed. We met Duane and Ramona at one of Waynes’s many hospital stays several years ago at Emmanuel Hospital, what an amazing couple (you) they are. His friends are too many to mention, and with my memory, I would not want to share what I remember about his stories of the other friends.
Brian
Brian was Wayne’s first born with Roxanne. When Brian was born, I was about 4 or 5, and I took an interest in him after he emerged from the diaper phase. Whenever we visited grandma, which was twice a month on Sundays for family dinners, Wayne and his growing family would join with us at 8000 n fowler Ave. Memory check: what was their phone number?.Come on, Butler 9, 2 . . .
The additions of Carla and then Caryn really helped to fill up grandma’s small home for our typical Thanksgiving and Christmas eve family gatherings, which were always happy and loving memories for me
I felt protective towards Brian. Brian and I would play together whenever we visited at the grandparents with them, until he was about 8 years old. I would sometimes have to pound on Greg and Con Bino, who lived across the street from the grandparents whenever they got too aggressive with him during neighborhood play times. I did not play with Carla or Caryn, who were much too young relative to my age at that time, and they were just interested in girly things anyway.
When Wayne and Brian came to the after funeral gathering for my father I commented to Brian about his unhealthy appearance. I asked him if he could make better health and lifestyle decisions for himself. Brian said “Ah Bruce, I am doing just fine”, and that was that. Wayne knew that I loved his son, and that i wanted the best for him, too. One of Wayne’s final attempts at helping Brian financially was to try to make him the prime beneficiary of his estate, and he wanted me to represent Brian’s interests, but, alas, Brian’s body had other plans, and he passed away much too soon.
When mom developed sepsis from an infected wound and became terminally ill, Wayne came to the hospital every day. He was there when we had the excruciating medical conference to make the decision to take the machines away that kept our mother’s body alive. That was the worst day of my life up to that point, and we were grateful for his loving, caring presence.. We all suffered together.
Every Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve family gatherings for nearly 20 years we shared with Grandma and Grandpa, and Uncle Wayne and the family. In adulthood, the frequency of holiday gatherings diminished a bit, but we still found a way to share some holidays many years, until Roxanne’s death, which happened shortly after our mothers’..
With the death of our mom, I entered into a year of great depression and guilt for my inability to help her in her final days. When our father died, I had my first major anxiety reaction that still, at times, reverberates within my soul. I hope and pray that Caryn and Carla are able to avoid such pitfalls, and, if not, may you heal quickly from them.
I would visit Wayne, Roxanne and my grandparents at the Park and Shop store, where they all worked together and tried hard to make the store a success. Twenty years later, Sharon and I would visit him at the Thriftway Scholls Ferry, where he worked at the end of his career. He really was in his element while he worked, and he had quite a ministry of sorts through his employment.
I remember talking with aunt Roxanne after she cared for her cancer stricken mother, Vivian. She said it took so much out of her, she could never help another person that same way.
I got my first dose of that strong medicine when Sharon and I took over hospice care for grandma in July of 1995. My experience with caring for my father proved to be the greatest challenge in life, it took so much out of me that I finally understood Aunt Roxanne’s experience with Vivian at the deepest level.
My father, even though he suffered from dementia, would remind me, while I was struggling to stay emotionally and financially afloat during his decliing years, that he and Corinne had invested 18 years in my upbringing, so I can somehow continue to find the energy to care for him the last years of his life. The care that my father required was specialized, and we had to learn as we went. And, the care for a deteriorating family member like my father or Uncle Wayne can appear, at times, to tear a family apart at the seems. The process of caring for and losing parents and other loved ones is one of the greatest challenges in life. That is what love is, and how it acts in real life, we sacrifice parts of our life, so that others needs may also be served.
I would like to say that Wayne thrived and loved Caryn, Carla, Donna, the grandchildren, and the other caregivers for being present for him in his time of need, and their love for Wayne motivated their desire to help him finish his own life with dignity. Like my father, Wayne wanted to die in his own home. Like my father, he succeeded, with loving family help.
Caryn, Carla, Pam, Sharon and I sacrificed major parts of our lives during the times of caring for our parents. Yet, we have not sacrificed but a fraction of what the death process will require from us in the future.
I think of my mother and father, and Uncle Wayne daily. My family has become very, very small. It sucks being an orphan. We have lost direct access to the wisdom of our elders, yet, it is now our responsibility to access and draw upon our own interior wells of love and insight, and share it liberally with others in need.
Loves infinite way continues, and and we are all welcome to walk on its path together, or alone.
Wayne was a big, sweet man who lived his best life. He gave himself to love, he gave himself to his family, he gave himself to his friends, he gave himself to his community, and he gave himself to Life
We all miss him.
May Wayne, our beloved friend, father, grandfather, and uncle rest in peace.
Let our grieving run its natural course.
Let our healing continue in earnest
We must give ourselves to love, if love is what we are after
We must open up our hearts to the tears and laughter,
We must give ourselves to love, give ourselves to love.
That is what Wayne would want.
And Wayne had a knack for getting what he wanted, didn’t he?
