To My Uncle Dale
I hope, so dearly, that you know how much it all meant to me.
I’d like to tell a story, toward the end of which you’ll see why I’ve decided to share it.
When I graduated from Vanderbilt, my plans were to pursue a career in investment banking. I’ve become a completely different person since mom passed, and in hindsight I realize that it was the money and fast-paced “Wall Streety” glamour that attracted me to it, but that’s neither here nor there. The point is that as graduation was approaching, I had landed several interviews and (I’m fairly certain) was close to a job offer for an entry level analyst position — until, brick wall as it was, nearly the entire industry experienced a hiring freeze due to the financial meltdown of that era of which we’re all too aware (shoutout The Big Short). As a broke, recent college grad, what the crisis amounted to for me personally was the eventual nonexistence of the gigantic bank I was planning to land a position at that summer. My plan, kaput.
As I’m sure many could attest to their own similar such memories, I can vividly remember how stunned and utterly helpless I felt when it all came crashing down. I had spent years of my life thinking my future was one of relative certainty. Sure, a lot of the boxes were still unchecked and filled with question marks, but at least I knew the general trajectory my life was going to take. I was going to be in banking and the rest will take care of itself. After all, much of our personal lives are, in fact, a result of our professional ones. Spouses often meet through work functions. Hobbies are had at the behest of a colleague introducing us to, say, Pickleball. I viewed it as while my real story was still up in the air, I could at least rest assured knowing I had a raw outline.
Without going into unnecessary detail, I was essentially just lost after that job disappeared. That’s the only term I can think of to describe my mindset when it came to what the hell I was going to do next. Not only was I clueless as to what jobs to apply for as I attempt to begin my career (i.e. actual, real life)…I couldn’t even figure out the TYPE of career to begin searching for said jobs.
It was around July that summer when my brother, knowing my predicament, offered for me to come visit him in Cincinnati where he was still playing baseball (thanks for making ME the right handed one, Dad 🙄). Just kidding. Kind of. Anyway, he was more or less extending an olive branch for me to decompress, forget about my woes, and hang out with him and his new circle of friends. One of whom, hilariously — his host family’s daughter, in fact — is now his beloved wife. That’s another tale, but for real tho. Who hosts professional baseball players to live with them when they have a college cheerleading daughter lmao? Obvs I’m joking and they truly are amazing people. Plus they worked out and achieved balance to the Force, so anyway back to the story. Thankful for the opportunity he gave me to “check out” for a week or two and let my mind be somewhat at ease, I took him up on the offer. We had a great time, and I’ll never forget it.
It’s here that we begin our descent to the overarching point of this post; which was all sparked by a completely unexpected event that occurred as I was driving back home to Nashville. Though the event didn’t appear like anything impactful at first glance, it was the metaphorical first turn of the wheel on the trip which would ultimately steer my entire life as I know it. And all it took was a fifteen minute phone call, a laughably timed/unlikely coincidence…and the flip of a coin.
As I began my drive back reminiscing over how much fun we’d had, it didn’t take long after merging on to I-75 for the stress and anxiety of the real world to start resurfacing. It was just as those thoughts were rearing their head when my phone suddenly rang, the caller ID displaying: Uncle Dale. Mind you, I’d say my extended family is similarly close to your typical, spread-out-all-over-the-place, eagle-blooded American-albeit-quarter-Chinese family — insofar as we saw each other once or twice a year typically on major holidays and maintain relatively-but-probably-should-have-more-in-a-perfect-world frequent contact with one another. So while his wasn’t a name on my caller ID that caused alarm or anything, it definitely raised an eyebrow. To summarize what we discussed: it was honestly one of the most touching conversations I’ve ever had, as well as one of the most genuine and resounding random acts of kindness I’ve ever had pointed in my direction.
What Uncle Dale basically said over those few-yet-monumental minutes was that he had heard through the grapevine that this job I was so excited about had fallen through, and that I was (paraphrasing but accurate) hopelessly depressed from feeling so aimless as to my prospects. He then told me that after thinking about it, he figured that Nashville was likely saturated with Vandy grads, making my dilemma all the more difficult to overcome, as what’s the point in grotestquely overpaying for a sheet of paper if the thing just ends up lost amidst a sea of other overpriced sheets of paper? Then he elevated what began as simple surprise at his call to a visceral degree of shock, because he followed that supposition by offering a solution: a place to stay (his own house) near Huntington, West Virginia — the logic being that perhaps there, my sheet of paper might stick out as somewhat more intriguing than in my current city, since they were more uncommon in his neck of the woods. Sure, I might not know what I wanted to do just yet, but being a professor at Marshall University, he said he could hook me up with job fairs, professor-ish support and the like to start getting a grip on things and go from there.
I need to acknowledge how tremendously much it meant to me that he even made that call in the first place. That doesn’t even scratch the surface of everything else he went on to do to help me, but the sheer initiative he took to even make the dial still wets my eyes to think about; because it existed entirely out of selfless, sincere concern for me and my future. Because frankly, he had literally nothing to gain from it. He really did just do it to help his nephew, and that can’t be emphasized enough. So there I was, trying to wrap my head around this random, out-of-left-field opportunity he had offered. Cue the unlikely coincidence.
I kid you not: just as he was finishing up telling me the thoughts he’d had about me moving up there — and I’m talking that exact moment of silence/conversational pause where a person finishes making a point and stops speaking in anticipation of your response — I notice I’m passing one of those big, green directional signs posted on interstates that indicate you need to go left for City X, or right for City Y. That whole time we’d been talking, I’d been approaching this split. My plan, of course, had been to stay on “I-71 to Louisville”, knowing that was my route to get back home to Nashville. But as I’m passing this sign, I see the route it veered off to, which read “I-75 to Lexington”. I remember like it was yesterday that the second I read those words, I felt like the closest thing to a “sign” as I’ve ever felt. Like, one of “those” signs, which I only explain being fully aware of the irony that it was an actual street sign. Anyway, as I knew from my trips there before, Lexington is exactly where I’d be going were I to be heading toward West Virginia. Thus, the coin flip.
Traffic was very light, so after realizing the literal pivot point that was rapidly approaching, I ended up pulling over and stopping on the shoulder as our conversation was coming to a close, telling Dale that obviously I appreciated the offer but needed to think about it since it was such a big decision. But it didn’t take long for me to connect that sign’s “sign”, with the unlikeliness of me passing it at that very specific moment, with all those raw and stressful emotions, with my future’s uncertainty, with insert-a-trillion-other-racing-thoughts-here. Admittedly, I’ve always been a somewhat whimsical decision maker in the grand scheme of things because I struggle in finding a design to the chaos of life despite my desperate attempts to believe otherwise so why overthink things, so in the end…I said screw it. I had enough clothes for two weeks having just been on this trip, and being that these events transpired during my life B.B. (Before Baxter…my dearly departed pup who was incidentally another beautiful outcome of this very coin flip so thank you again Dale), I knew that Mom could ship what little else I had to WV if it came down to it. TBH my gaming PC was pretty much the only concern, so I figured yolo. I flipped a quarter, figuring that fate had already aligned enough stars, so why not entrust it to give the final nudge and send me on the right path? Sure enough, Lexington it was as I looked at that path and said “take me home, country roads”. And took me home, they did.
Uncle Dale would go on not only to provide me with the launching pad to set off on what would become my near decade-long career in the insurance industry, but he gave me the extra resources I needed to ignite it, financial and all. All by doing the same type of kind, considerate things he was never obligated or even close to obligated to do. There’s too many to name, but for instance, he paid for a two-night stay for me to visit the city of Roanoke, VA, so I could attend a job fair the city was hosting. Then, after I managed to connect with a chauvinistic (I’ll explain in a sec) manager at Liberty Mutual, he paid for at least three (maybe four?) more trips during my interview process with them in hopes I could finally land a job that was at least in the realm of the financial service industry I’d been aiming for. I say chauvinistic because my last set of interviews was basically “I’m in” the way I saw it, since I also had to drive to Alexandria to get once-over’ed by their big wig area overseer. My last day in Roanoke (the next step being an offer letter), I’m eating alone at a seafood restaurant and couldn’t help but notice that my server was, well…she was hotter than a barrel of fire. So using my presumed upcoming relocation to both obtain sincerely sought information as well as, well…meet a hot chick as a 23 year old bachelor, I asked “hey, I’m probably about to move here for a new job, what are some good places/apt complexes to look at?” Naturally, she asked where I was interviewing. So I imagine, after I answered “Liberty Mutual”, you’ll understand my surprise when she said “No f’ing way…I’M interviewing for that position!” You see, I knew it was down to me and one other mystery candidate. The guy had told me, however, that having my aforementioned, overpriced Econ/Corporate Strategy sheet of paper, that I stuck far out over the English degree from the local college a half hour away. Turns out that was all “blah blah blah, BS BS BS”, people-pleasing sales-talk that one can develop a tendency for through a career in sales if they aren’t careful, because I’ll be dag-gummed if this ain’t exactly what happened.
My server, the hot English grad from just over yonder, would unintentionally place my mind into a renewed cyclone of sadness as yet ANOTHER job vanished right before my Asian eyes. So thank the heavens above for a one Mrs. Kimberley Brown: the coolest, most down to earth, pragmatically-minded manager ever who ended up hiring me. She happened to run the one and only Liberty Mutual office in WV, and as part of the hiring process, was someone that Manager Creeper had me cross-interview with as an added reference being that it was like fifteen minutes away. She and I had an awesome convo when we met that day, so as a last ditch effort, after getting the rejection letter I emailed her saying I’d love working for her even though she wasn’t currently hiring if something ever opened up.
Finally, a plan that actually worked. She hired me on the spot, and as a result, my life has led to here. I still do some work in the insurance industry, but on a much more limited basis being that I discovered my true passion (writing) after losing my mom. Hopefully it eventually pans out as my one and only focus, but the point of all this is one I want to make sure I hone in on as I close, now that the ridiculous story of my working life is over.
The takeaway…the real point of me writing this is to highlight how incredibly helpful, crucially impactful, and ultimately, just flat out meaningful my Uncle Dale’s actions were as they would relate to the course of my everyday existence. What to him might have been simply lending a hand to a loved one in need was, to me, a bonafide life changer. In the most tangible of ways, it really did create a butterfly effect that has shaped my reality as much as, if not more than, any other one action in a similar vein. If he were here with me at this very moment, I would look him in the eye, hug him dearly, and I would tell him that.
Sadly, my Uncle Dale passed away this evening after a long battle with chronic health concerns.
I’ve expressed gratitude over the years in one way or the other from time to time, but never have I so succinctly summarized my deepest, most raw and real feelings about those months I spent with him. So many moments, so many meaningful chats, and so many memories are flooding through my mind that I desperately wish I could talk to him about as I sit here writing this. As much as I thought I learned after losing my mother, I still find myself regretting not making him more aware of how much he meant to me, and I hate that death has that impact. I want to believe that the people I love know exactly how I feel, and yet I can’t help but doubt that I did enough.
I don’t know if it’s simply a natural reaction to loss that’s to be expected, or if it’s the reluctant truth. Worst of all, there’s no way to answer that question anymore. All I can do now is try to share what kind of person Dale was with as many people as are within my reach, in hope that it helps contribute to his memory living on to the extent it deserves to.
You just learned a lot about me. Probably more than you wanted to. But what REALLY matters, the moral of that story is that the whole thing was made possible because of the unconditional love and kindness my Uncle Dale had for me. That’s the message I want to share: I want people to know how uniquely caring, compassionate, and considerate Dale was for others. If you’ve read this far and know that now, then I’ve accomplished that goal. And if you have or had anyone in your life who you feel deserves to know how you feel about them but have trouble finding the words, then share this with them. Tag them in it so they know. Or better yet, just call them and tell them about it. Tell them “Thank you. Thank you for what you’ve done for me. But most of all, thank you for who you are. It means the world to me, and you deserve to know that as much as I do.”
To you, Uncle Dale: if it’s all true and I make it up there myself, I know with absolute certainty that I will see you again. If anyone’s getting through those gates, it is unquestionably going to be you. This family will never, ever be the same without you and your one-in-a-million personality. We love you and will miss you so, so much. Thank you for being such an amazing uncle.
