Seeing Uncle Cecil
My life took a strange twist when I was 21. My three-year-old daughter, Jennifer, was playing in our home one day and suddenly became very quiet. I could not find her and I became very alarmed. I was calling for her all through the house, searching closets and such. Suddenly, she came up from behind me and said, "I saw my Uncle Cecil, mommy. He held my hand and told me he was going to take me home with him and would always take care of me."
Jennifer had not known her Uncle Cecil. In fact, I had only met Cecil briefly once myself in high school, before I met his younger brother, whom I married three years later. Cecil was in the Marines and was home for a visit. He came to the high school to see his old teachers and friends. I was at the top of the stairs going to my next class when I saw the most incredibly handsome, tanned young man wearing a stunning blue Marine dress uniform, topped with a white hat. His white gloves were strapped on the shoulder of his uniform. I was so breathtaken that I dropped my books all the way down the stairs. I was new to the school; it was only my first month there and felt like a total klutz for dropping my books in front of this very handsome guy. He had a wonderful smile. He tipped his hat to me, revealing his snow-white hair. He helped me pick up my books. A senior named Chrissy was also helping, and she introduced me to Cecil. That was the one and only time I ever saw him.
Cecil drown while on duty in 1971, just five months after I met him. His pictures were never around the house because his mother was so grief-stricken that she hid them and hated to see the Marine photos of her son sitting around. I don't even recall how I became interested in his younger brother, who looked nothing like Cecil, but we were married in 1974, right after I graduated high school.
I told my little daughter she could not have seen her Uncle Cecil, but asked her what he looked like. Jennifer said he was wearing a long white gown and had white hair. Indeed, Cecil's hair had been bleached snow white before he died from being out in the sun so much where he was stationed at the Marine base in Cherry Point, North Carolina.
Cecil was not discussed much at my in-laws' home because of the cloud of doubt around his mysterious death. He drown while swimming in an off-limits area where swimming was strictly prohibited. The mystery around his death stemmed from the bump on the back of his head. The Marine Corps told my mother-in-law that he hit his head when he dove into the water, and had his body not snagged on a log beneath the water, he would have been washed out to sea. The bump should have been on the front if he was diving into the water when he hit his head, as the Marine Corps indicated, not on the back.
I told Jennifer that she could not have seen her Uncle Cecil, but I would take her to where he lived. I had never been to his grave, but since it was a small town cemetery I was sure I could find it. As I drove through the single-lane cemetery, Jennifer's little finger began to point to a headstone, and she said, "There he is, mommy. There is where Uncle Cecil lives. That is where I am going to live and he is going to hold my hand and take care of me."
Needless to say, I was blown right out of the water. Sure enough, my three-year-old was pointing directly to his headstone. Then the scariest thing happened...
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