uncle sean

Maybe it's morbid, but right this moment I'm thinking about uncle Sean.  My mother's only brother to survive 'Nam.  He ran a clothing store in Birmingham.  And then one day he disappeared.  Gay men disappeared in the south.  Also men (& women) of my mother's generation, people associated with the Weather Underground, also disappeared.  My mother was associated with the W.U. for a bit.  Mainly because she'd lost two brothers already.  Sean was somebody I don't clearly remember.  He has a face like a forgotten Polaroid.  The light falling on his mustache being forgotten by the photograph itself, by the photographers, by time.  It falls across his glasses like it's being poured from around the edges of blackout curtains, it falls in funnels through the lenses onto eyes that hide their colour.  Were his eyes hazel?  Like my mother's, or like mine?  Did we all have that trait of eyes that were never green, nor blue, nor the colour of cut fall grass?  Everyone knew Sean was gay.  Most of my mother's friends were, too.  One day Sean didn't show up to open his clothing store.  After a week we were all pretty certain he was missing, but no-one knew why.  The bills were paid.  The store wasn't in anything resembling debt.  As far as my mother would speculate, Sean wasn't into anything with anyone.  He was a pretty quiet, unassuming guy.  He had been an artist, and then he stopped, and fashion became his life.  A disappointment to his mother, and an inspiration to his sister, and a ghost to his nephew.  My parents stopped talking about Sean after a year.  And then he never came up again.  A story without an ending.  As simple a mystery as ever lived.  One day is A.  The next day is not-A.  Sean.  No Sean.  My mother never knew.  So I don't know.

Mystery as hereditary trait.  An heirloom enigma.  Why did he leave?  Did he leave?  Or did he get pulled over by a cop, one night in Alabama.  Did he meet someone strange?  Did someone take him from us?

Uncle Sean is a locked, sealed room, labeled 1981-1982?  I don't have the key for it anywhere.

Trust me, I searched.