Whistle While You Work

We were at a small diner in New Hampshire. The diner sat directly across from a lumber supply company, on a long two lane road that weaves through deep woods, streams, and granite outcroppings. The kinda country bears roam through. In fact, the bears were more or less at home- he sometimes left old watermelon rinds in the backyard as a token of understanding that this was really their country, and a nighttime snack constituted an offering of good faith. 

At the diner, the waitress seemed to already know what he wanted, seemed to know that he didn’t want to talk much. Don’t get me wrong- he was beloved. A local builder, often found whistling, giving away everything he could- time, money, labor, and spirit. The unsaid hush that followed him around for a long time was “the sickness”. His obituary would later read that he endured a “heroic 20 year cancer journey”. I had no idea it was that long. No one wanted to ask about his health, and it was understood that he would volunteer information as he felt necessary. 

Everyone at the diner was pursuing breakfast independently, fitting for the live free or die types. You’ve never heard a quieter diner, and with the absence of the softly played radio and the occasional clinking of dishes and “more coffee?”, it would’ve been completely silent. In moments like these, I could feel his mind mapping strange orbits, a conglomeration of family, the work ahead, the sickness, how he physically felt, what his hushed heart was telling him in plain terms. “So, your mother is a good cook. Mary can really cook”, he’d say. It seemed that in these spaces, conversation was difficult, yet I wanted to honor his attempt. It was his way of showing love. It was still morning, and our conversations tended to flow more freely in the evening, just after the nightly news on ABC with David Muir- he’d suck on raspberry popsicles that temporarily provided relief from the sores in his mouth. We’d discuss politics, the Bible, family, share stories. I tried to listen, to squash my attempt to babble and fill silence with random anecdotes. 

Silent or not, I deeply admired my uncle. He had a certain spirit about him- that unidentifiable air of mystery. Someone with a rich interior life. He was a master carpenter, whistled often, invented things, fixed things, never read but loved music and liked to listen to poems out loud. When he was younger he had a full crop of big, curly hair and the strong body of a swimmer. And he worked like the devil, restoring old barns, building additions, and fixing kitchens. Back in the 90’s he had built a church in Cheshire, CT from the ground up. 20 years later, and with a much thinner body, he was still working, and I was up for a few weeks to help. 

The task at hand, of all places, was at a church. I watched his meticulous work with amazement, and he went through the windows one by one, carefully tugging them out and installing new ones with expert precision. The sickness was there in the midst of all this labor- as he would often lose his lunch after another trip to the diner. Minutes later I’d smell pot smoke lingering from his green Toyota truck (license plate: TROUT1), as he sat back in the drivers seat listening to Paul Simon. Even then, he’d whistle. One time he offered a joint- I refused. “Probably better to keep your mind clear”, he said. 



A few humid July days later, we were back at it, this time power washing the exterior of the big old white church. I was up on a 30 foot ladder, and with the weight and power of the washer, I barely managed to do an adequate job covering the entire front side of the building. I headed down, and loaded some tools back into the back of his truck. Minutes later, I saw him climb the ladder quickly and confidently- washing the parts I’d missed. Still, he was whistling. I sat back and felt boyish, and as a boy does, I looked up at this man in wonder. The whistling carpenter- the steady hand in the wind, the man of depth and mystery. He had this effect on many. In 2011, Uncle Pete inspired Poet Laureate Donald Hall to write a poem called "Blue Snow". The poem was published in The Atlantic magazine. I don't know what that poem meant to Uncle Pete, and he never mentioned it to me:

Pete Sullivan dropped by:
“Your barn needs work, and so do I.”
Pete had the eye

To fix old boards with new
And keep the handy knotholes through
Which swallows flew.

Pete raked and scraped away
Seventy-year-old scraps of hay
And found the sleigh

That frisky Riley drew
In nineteen-hundred-thirty-two
When snow fell blue.

Old cowbarns tilt awry
When sills go punky, and that’s why
Peter dropped by.

On the last night of my stay in New Hampshire, we listened to a song called “24 frames” by Jason Isbell. The next day when I left, he told me his favorite line: “You thought god was an architect/ now you know/ he’s something like a pipe bomb/ ready to blow”. I could see while that line resonated with this man- he had cancer, a recently-finished divorce. . .out of luck, out of work, and with few friends. I’d often hear him whistle that tune when we went fishing in the summer over the next 3 years. 

Uncle Pete ended up dying at home on his birthday, April 14th. The same day the Titanic went down. The same day Lincoln was shot at Ford’s Theater in 1865. A day noted by history, and now, by me, as the day where my whistling uncle died wearing a t-shirt that said “ I feel like shit”. On days when I do as well, I remember him. I remember to whistle.