Onkel Emil

Last week, I got a phone call from my cousin Johannes from my hometown of Freiburg telling me that his father just passed. Patricia and I were in shock, as we had seen him doing well only two month ago. Last summer, we spent some time in Freiburg, as I had not been there for over 17 years, and Patricia had never seen where I grew up nor met anyone of my immediate family.
While there, we stayed with Johannes, Heidi and Lara, and visited uncle Emil. On one of our visits, I asked Emil for a favor: would he be willing to take us upstairs to his organ in our local church and play a tune for us. I guess I just wanted to impress Patricia.  He agreed.
As a sidebar, the organ had just been fully renovated under Emil's supervision, but now it was hard for Emil to climb the stairs at age 84, so the church put a piano near the alter so he did not have to climb stairs when he played during mass on weekdays. On Sunday, they now had a young man playing the organ.
Spending time watching Emil play, Patricia and I took some pictures which you can see clicking on the link.

I spent a lot of time in this church as I child. I was an alter boy up to the age of 14 and sat next to Emil on the organ bench, as did many of the kids in the village, changing the display of the page numbers for the upcoming songs.
I am indebted to Emil and his late wife, Resi, for taking care of my and my brothers' and sister's affairs after our parents passed in 1967. For years, Emil sorted through all of my father's papers - my father kept everything - so there were a lot of them.
Many years later, they took care of Resi's parents (my mother's parents) in there small two bedroom apartment until the passing of my grandmother.
Emil in his professional life was the HR person for the city of Freiburg, and was very much liked and respected by everyone because of his kindness and humanity toward people.
This is a lot of writing, but I needed to get all of this off my chest. I loved my Onkel Emil very much and will miss not being able to call him on Skype now and then.
May he rest in peace.