RIP: Ronald Luveal
I got a call from my dad as I was leaving work yesterday. His brother, my Uncle Ronnie, passed away yesterday morning. He went into the hospital yesterday with some breathing problems. They gave him some breathing treatments, but they were not helping. The doctors decided to do some x-rays to figure out what was going on. They had him on an x-ray table in the radiology department. That’s when he had a massive heart attack, and died right away. Dad said that the doctors worked on him for a while to try to revive him, but he was already gone.
I wasn’t very close to Ronnie. We saw each other during Christmas, and the occasional Thanksgiving, but that was about it. I did go to visit him in Austin a few times during summer vacations, but that was a rare trip. He was always nice to me, but there was a distance about him. It wasn’t directed at me, of course. That was just his style. He was a gay man, and I think that was part of it. He had a hard time getting close to people because he grew up in a time where homosexuality was barely acknowledged, and rarely accepted.
The one thing that I remember about him more than anything else was his calm assurance and intelligence. He rarely rushed into decisions, and always seemed to think his way through things. I wish that I had that talent most days, and I think that as I get older, I approach his thoughtfulness.
Another thing that I remember about his house in Austin was that it was always full of books. I’ve always loved to read, and I always looked forward to my visits to Austin, so that I could pull the old, dusty tomes from his shelves to see what kind of adventures I could find there. He rarely had mainstream books (except for Anne Rice) on his shelves, so it was always an eye opener when I cracked the books to see what I would find.
My last trip to Texas, I passed fairly close to Austin on my way to San Antonio, but the day was going to be 10 hours long to get to San Antonio without a side-trek to Austin. Going to Austin was going to add another 2 hours of driving, plus another 1-2 hours of finding Ronnie, and visiting with him. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make it to see my Mom that day if I stopped to see Ronnie. Now I wish that I had stopped to visit with him one last time, but I figured that I had more time to see him in the future. He was only 62 years old, and this has made me realize (even more than I already knew) that our time with our loved ones is fleeting.
Goodbye, Ronnie. Tell Granny and Papa “Hi” for me while you’re up in Heaven with them.
