My memories of Ronny will seem thin in comparison to most. I never knew the strong young man with whom Bev fell in love. I don’t know the mischievous boy who Wendell called brother. I never knew the farmer and provider whom the girls called Dad. My memories lack the passion that I saw locked in his eyes.

I haven’t got sunny days and happy thoughts of him to ponder. No tales of his playful humor and quick wit. My tale is a cautionary one yet silly to even call it that. What happened to Ronny seems like a tale from some Oscar nominated movie. It just never felt real.

I don’t really know what it is about assisted care facilities but I just don’t care for them. They make me feel somehow unworthy or greedy. It could be the shortcoming I still feel as a grandchild who failed his grandmother, though I doubt she harbored any such thoughts when she died. Or maybe its just the subtle reminder that age and fortune’s sticky grip cannot be avoided by anyone that makes me squirm at the thought of a place like that but if I was going to meet Gina’s Uncle Ronny I was going to have to go in there. Everybody who wanted to meet or see Ronny did.

It feels sour to me that a person would need to be locked up for their own safety but it’s a hard point to argue against. The world is dangerous enough when we have complete control of our faculties and much more so when we loss a firm grasp on our own beings. Ronny’s situation didn’t really say to me that he had lost his grasp but rather that it was taken from him.

He was strong. You could tell that. Even in his slow stammering steps he exuded that strength mingled with the frustration that his body wouldn’t respond in the fashion he was telling it to. The fire in his eye and the quick whip of his tongue conveyed beyond a doubt the anger that he felt that flowed from his frustrations, but who could blame him? I cannot even begin to fathom the reality he was faced with every day.

A story in which sorrow made its home lived within his bones for many years. To pass would be a blessing yet now that it has happened I cannot escape this feeling of injustice. Clearly he didn’t deserve what happened to him. Yet I have little knowledge of his life but I cannot image a crime deserving of such a fate.