Bayou Tuesday The Empty Chair

 

His Voice on the Wind, The Empty Chair on the Porch

5 AM, Tuesday, October 21, 2025

Good morning. It’s been a long while since I’ve written one of these.

I’m up early, long before the sun, making coffee in the pre-dawn quiet. But the quiet is different this morning. It’s heavier. I’m trying to sort out my feelings, but my heart just feels hollowed out. I got the call this past Sunday, October 19th—the one you never want to get, the one that makes the world tilt on its axis.

My Uncle Jerry, a true bayou legend, passed away.

He was a legend not because of any grand gesture or worldly success, but because he was our storyteller. He was the keeper of our history, the voice of the bayou itself. His stories were magic. They weren’t just "stories"; they were adventures. Sitting on the front porch, he could weave a tale from the way the humidity felt on your skin or the sound of a bullfrog. He told us about the hidden places, the secret fishing holes, the way the cypress trees whispered to each other, the nature of a hurricane, and the ghosts of old trappers. He’d make you laugh with a story about a stubborn mule and make you shiver with one about the Feu Follet. Each story was a gift, a piece of himself and this land that he loved.

And that’s what makes his passing so senseless, so hard to swallow. His life was this rich, vibrant thing, full of wisdom and humor. But it ended in a cold, sterile series of events. It started with a back injury he suffered at the jail, all because the DA wanted him there. That led to the hospital, and then to a rehab facility. It was a sterile, bureaucratic end for a man who was anything but. Our local church is thankfully handling all the arrangements, and other folks are helping me sort out the details.

The grief in this cabin is thick, almost suffocating. Uncle Bill is taking it hard, sad and cranky about the loss of his brother. I understand it. His crankiness is just a shield for a broken heart. They were brothers; they shared this lifetime of stories. Bill was the audience, the heckler, and the co-conspirator in so many of them. Now, his best audience is gone.

The hardest part, for me, is the silence. The front porch feels wrong. The chair that Uncle Jerry used to sit in, his unofficial throne, is empty. It’s just a piece of wood now, but it was once the center of our world, the stage from which he launched all our adventures. Its emptiness is a void that changes the whole landscape.

I find myself listening. Sometimes, when the wind moves through the pines or rustles the water, I think I can still hear his voice on the wind, finishing a story he started or maybe just starting a new one. I’m going to miss those bayou stories. I’m going to miss the way he’d pause for dramatic effect, the twinkle in his eye.

It’s a sad, quiet morning here. We’ve lost our storyteller. But we’ll keep his stories alive. We’ll retell them, even if we get them half-wrong. We’ll listen for his voice on the wind.

Goodbye, Uncle Jerry. We won’t let your adventures end.