RIP Uncle Bob

[Drunk Monk]

My Uncle Bob passed a few weeks ago but with all happening with my mom, I haven't really thought about it much.  Bob was the gambler, like professional gambler.  He was a dock worker by trade and I'm told he was regularly busted for illegal gambling in HI.  He married a travel agent that specialized in Vegas and relocated there where he got banned from several casinos.  That aunt was the one who would get me amazing Vegas hotel deals.  Maybe some of you came with me for those?  I can't remember.  Vegas escapades are super blurry.  I do remember gambling with Bob.  He was quiet, a lurker, who bet with the house in craps.  Not a favorable player, given the social quality of craps.  We played a table for a very short time.  I followed his bets.  We broke even.  We were making nibbler bets and afterwards, he pulled me aside and said in his thick Hawaiian pidgin 'you can make those $500 bets on one roll, but too much stress'.  

No one in the family thought Bob would outlive his sibs.  They all thought he'd be one of the first to go. Of my dad's 8 sibs, only one now remains - Aunt Mildred.

[Drunk Monk]

Uncle Bob's funeral was today.  My cousin sent me some pix.  He was buried at Punchbowl, the National Cemetery, the military graveyard that my grandfather built and where my mom spent her teenage years, one of the world's most beautiful resting places.  My grandparents and my other uncle (father to my cousins that left his crap at my folk's house and that has the gazillion unopended dvds) are buried there.  Uncle Bob had full military honors.  My cousin sent a photo of an honor guard playing taps on bugle and the coffin draped with the U.S. flag.