Spending valuable time with my uncle.

My 94-year-old WWII Veteran uncle is nearing the end of his life. He is hospitalized in the city where I live, which is about 90 minutes from my hometown where he has spent his entire life. His only other relative who is still able to make a hospital visit is his daughter, and she works full time and has a toddler. He married at age 50 to a younger woman, if you are puzzling the math, lol. I've been visiting him every day when his daughter or Son-in-Law can't make it. We are having wonderful conversations, and sometimes we just sit together. He is telling many stories from his life, He is re-living his many years, and I am benefitting from being present for that. Today he told me that the father of a physician from our hometown met Abraham Lincoln on a Civil War battlefield when he was 12 years old, in 1862.

My uncle has always been there. He has loved me and supported me since the day I was born. I've never known a gentler, kinder person. I know that I will remember and cherish these days all of my life.