A Coda For My Musical Mentor

On a Wednesday afternoon in late March, my uncle James O’Malley sat smoking a cigarette in his backyard on the outskirts of Austin. His cowboy hat was tilted low over his sunglasses, and he cracked jokes as a light breeze stirred the wind chimes. If you didn’t notice how skinny he’d gotten under his faded purple shirt, and if you hadn’t seen how much effort it took him to get into his wheelchair that morning, you could almost pretend he wasn’t dying.

About a week earlier, James had decided to shi...