We got a call on Sunday from my cousin telling us that my Uncle Tommy had died.

It was a surprise, like death often is, even though we knew it was coming. Leah and I had seen him at his gun shop just a few weeks ago. He was tired and weak, but seemed like he was going to keep plugging along for a while yet. He had been slowly declining for several years with same condition that was partially responsible for my father’s death, pulmonary fibrosis.

Pulmonary fibrosis reduces the ability of the lungs to oxygenate the blood. In my father’s case, acid reflux had caused scarring in his lungs. I don’t think the cause of Uncle Tommys’ condition was ever identified. He had worked for a number of years as an electrician at a power plant construction site, and in the past, industrial construction sites were a prime source of lung irritants.

He opened his gun shop as a sideline while he still worked as an electrician. After about five years of working out of a little building in his back yard, he opened a gun shop in a strip mall, and he kept the store there for more than 50 years. He tried for a couple of years to sell the shop, but couldn’t find a buyer. He wanted to avoid forcing his wife to inventory and close the shop. When we last saw him, he was doing some inventory work, but he still had a lot of guns left in the shop.

Uncle Tommy was my father’s half brother, born 19 years after my father, almost exactly the same time that separates their deaths.

Uncle Tommy was my father’s last surviving sibling.