The spirit of my uncle, Terry Bailey, floats through my first published novel like a ghost. Terry was five years older than me. He was my dad's much younger brother and was the last child of my paternal grandparents, S. H. "Sim" Bailey, Sr. and Myrtle "Myrt" Akin Bailey.
Terry was very much like my big brother. We played together and shared life. Some of the things I remember about him: Big front teeth with a gap between them, really blue eyes, kindness, generosity, a fondness for peanut butter and homemade fig preserve sandwiches. A love for Christmas. A love for soul singers like James Brown and the Temptations. A love for everyone around him.
Terry could tap dance. I have memories of watching him and cousin Harry Hancock at tap dance lessons in the Moina Michael auditorium (Athens, Georgia Heyward Allen Motor Company building now). Terry and Harry were the only two boys I knew who could tap dance and they were good.
When I was a teenager, Terry gave me an Art Garfunkle album I still own and treasure. He took me to Foster's Jewelers in his big green GTO muscle car to pick out a china pattern before I got married after I had refused to do the traditional thing. I still have the dishes -- and I never eat on them. But the memory of Uncle Terry helping me pick them is enough to make them keepers for life.
In his early twenties, Terry rode his bike down Baxter Hill in Athens, Georgia one night. A car turned in front of him, he hit the hood, and his head hit the pavement and a piece of his skull broke and pushed into his brain. They didn't think he'd live the night, but he did and he spent many months in Emory hospital in Atlanta and many years recovering.
During his long recovery time, Terry went back to the University of Georgia and got a Master's degree in counseling. He was Assistant Director of Admissions at Columbus College in Columbus, Georgia when they found the cancer in his colon, and then in his liver. A car accident ended his life a few weeks later. Did he intentionally drive his car into that tree? I think so. He was only 34 but looked decades older. The cancer would have killed him in a matter of weeks and he was worried about how all of us would handle his worsening illness.
Terry was married when he died, but he and his wife Penny didn't have children. After my grandmother (his mother) moved into a retirement home, we cleaned out her house. No one could look at Terry's things. His childhood papers and pictures were stored in a box in the basement. I took that box. I will cherish his memory, always.