June 22, 2011
My uncle Duncan, an amazing painter, painted this for me on my 19th Birthday(my mother just had it reframed as it was falling apart on edges). He wrote on the top “reality is a subjective experience”- i miss him and his wildness, he was a tall, bearded man who studied painting in PAris after he fought in WWII-he lived with my quiet aunt 30 years his junior for the rest of his life, until she found him dead beside her one Autumn morning. He was often drunk. My grandmother never fully approved, always wanted Libby to be with a functional, successful man and not a roaring, wild-mouthed painter-brilliant to boot. His paintings are like de kooning, only more Duncan, sumptuous! Beebee never approved of any of the men her daughters chose to marry. She shook her head at my father and thought he was angry and had it out for rich people. Beebee and I were close, I loved her deep and still she was a snob, but I broke her some, we always cried and laughed together after our fights, I was never afraid to yell at her and call her on her snobbery and her traditional ways. She called me common because I didn;t like to wear underwear, she taught me bridge, she was once a republican(voted for Reagan, that fool) and then turned a die-hard liberal. i miss her and I miss Duncan, yet they are all around, I feel them…Families are all nuts, the way they talk and keep silent, the way they hurt so deep until their deaths, then  their ghosts waiting and watching while we all live in the thick, pungent residue of what they once were……

My uncle Duncan, an amazing painter, painted this for me on my 19th Birthday(my mother just had it reframed as it was falling apart on edges). He wrote on the top “reality is a subjective experience”- i miss him and his wildness, he was a tall, bearded man who studied painting in PAris after he fought in WWII-he lived with my quiet aunt 30 years his junior for the rest of his life, until she found him dead beside her one Autumn morning. He was often drunk. My grandmother never fully approved, always wanted Libby to be with a functional, successful man and not a roaring, wild-mouthed painter-brilliant to boot. His paintings are like de kooning, only more Duncan, sumptuous! Beebee never approved of any of the men her daughters chose to marry. She shook her head at my father and thought he was angry and had it out for rich people. Beebee and I were close, I loved her deep and still she was a snob, but I broke her some, we always cried and laughed together after our fights, I was never afraid to yell at her and call her on her snobbery and her traditional ways. She called me common because I didn;t like to wear underwear, she taught me bridge, she was once a republican(voted for Reagan, that fool) and then turned a die-hard liberal. i miss her and I miss Duncan, yet they are all around, I feel them…Families are all nuts, the way they talk and keep silent, the way they hurt so deep until their deaths, then  their ghosts waiting and watching while we all live in the thick, pungent residue of what they once were……