His Uncle - free write process

One of the best ways to shake off "Writer's Block", to get rid of the Watcher, the inner voice that says you can't is to do a free write to just splay something on paper. At one of our meetings a member brought in three pictures.

I chose the picture at the top and then spent around ten minutes free writing. This is what I came up with.
His Uncle -

This had once been my uncle’s place. He had passed and I had come to look, to reminisce, and to recover from the ordeal of the funeral. I just wanted to get away so had driven north from Burlington through the lush fall colors. I could remember his love of Vermont, of the earth, of things quiet and settled. He had moved here in his 60’s to read and have a small vegetable garden after years in New York City as a playwright. His play “Ten Miles to Eternity” drafted when he was at Bowdoin College had captured audiences in Portland, ME, Boston and off Broadway in NYC. In it four people, two men and two women, had received golden dated passes to Eternity. They discussed, argued and joked about what they would do with the time left, what the after life would be and how they would prepare for it. It established him as a thoughtful writer with a humorous side. The move had seemed such a change to us all and we had tried to stop him.

“You’ll get bored.” “There will be no one you can have a civil conversation with.”

But it made no difference and one day he was in New York and the next he was gone.

As a family we visited in shifts, parked our cars on his lawn, brought food, and paraded his grand nieces and nephews. He watched us all with quiet pride and wonder at his growing family. We played in the hay in the barn, swam in the muddy pond and taught our children how to drive his tractor.

When it was time for us to leave he would have words for each of us from his readings or his thoughts and would stand on the porch and wave us out of sight.

Somehow those images have stayed in our heads and when we have a quiet moment from our busy lives in the city, the pictures of the fields, the pond, the porch, and the vegetable patch come to mind and give us balance.

Now as I had just driven my car up onto the overgrown lawn, seen the door to the barn with its peeling paint and broken boards I really knew that he was gone and things would be different. I walked to the barn, put my hands on the peeling paint of the door, feeling the heat from the setting sun and the grain of the wood and the slight movement as it swung on its hinges. There still was some life there, like feeling a slowed pulse or a steady rhythm of life. I said my “Good Byes” to his spirit, thought of what he had been, what I would remember and carry with me, then turned, opened the door to my car, climbed in, started the engine and backed slowly down the drive.
It is your turn.. just pick one of the pictures and have a go at it.