Early in May, the call came through that Uncle Aldo was on his way out up in Donegal. It was a miracle that he was even going still. Aldo had drank like a fool always and chased women and crashed cars; he burned summonses; he fell out of a hotel one time and landed on a taxi. I was the last of his close relations. He was my father’s only brother, and my father was long dead. It was the lungs, in either case, that would cart them off. The lungs and the dampness, I suppose. Here’s a very old joke— Cause of Death: the west of Ireland. Aldo had mostly been a figure of my childhood. His visits had
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