The Bayou Goes Quiet the Loudest Silence: Mourning a Bayou Legend Farewell to Uncle Jerry
Well howdy, folks. It’s Tuesday, October 21, 2025, and this isn't the kind of post I ever wanted to write.
I know I’ve been quiet lately—first, wrestling with the courts, and now, wrestling with a much deeper silence. The truth is, the reason I haven't been posting is because Uncle Jerry passed away this past Sunday.
He was still at the rehab facility, recovering from the broken vertebrae he suffered in jail. The official cause was complications stemming from his injury and his previous health struggles. But to me, the cause was simply that the bayou lost one of its truest, wildest spirits, and the world is dimmer for it.
Since Sunday, my life has been a blur of logistics, not bayou adventures. I've been consumed with making all the arrangements—the phone calls, the paperwork, the meetings at the funeral home. It’s a blur of details that nobody prepares you for, all while carrying a grief that feels as heavy as a hundred pounds of wet moss.
Uncle Bill is here at the cabin. He’s about as cranky as usual, complaining about the quality of the suits I picked out and demanding to know why the funeral home insists on using flowers that “smell like a French Quarter parlor.” But underneath the usual stubbornness, he is profoundly sad about his brother. They fought constantly, they argued over every domino tile and every fishing lure, but they were brothers. That empty chair on the porch where Jerry used to sit is louder than any territorial roar from the swamp. Bill misses him fiercely.
It’s hard to imagine the porch without Jerry’s loud laugh, his exaggerated stories, or his endless, hopeful search for lost Werther's Originals. He was chaos, he was laughter, and he was family.
I'll be stepping away from the blog for a while to focus on the services and on making sure Bill and the rest of the family are okay. The bayou will wait for us, and I promise to bring you back into the light when I can.
Please keep Uncle Jerry in your thoughts. I know he’d want you all to tell a good, long, slightly unbelievable story today.
Rest in Peace, Uncle Jerry.