It's too much pressure to write a eulogy, so this isn't going to be that. But the occasion is the same: Jon Atkins, my wife's uncle, has passed away.
I met Jon for the first time when he was already homeless, and then only on a few occasions in the years that followed. If you live in Bend or central Oregon, you may have seen him even more than me though you may not realize it. You may have walked right past him, not sure what to think. Hopefully he was kind to you, and you to him.
He certainly was kind to me and my family: his family. In fact, Jon was a consistent, caring voice for my wife for her whole life, offering positive words of encouragement when she needed them, able to relate to the struggles that life can present in a way that few can. She would visit with him on occasion over the years when his whereabouts were known, make calls to check up on him to some of the shelters and centers that might take him in, worry about him when he checked out. In the decades when I knew him, he never asked us for anything or really expressed a desire for anything he didn't have. It was never transactional.
My own relationship with him, aside from the connection to my wife, was naturally around music. One of the first things I learned about Jon when we first met so many years ago during a relatively stable period was that he liked classic rock, played a little guitar and wanted to learn more. So we gave him one and taught him some chords--the man loved Knockin' on Heaven's Door, and don't we all? He also seemed to like what he heard of my music, and although I can be very skeptical of compliments, his I believed at a time when I wasn't sure who to believe. He would ask Addi about my music when she visited him. She'd plays some parts for him and he'd dig it. He'd encourage it. I was pretty fascinated by him as well. Knowing much about the story of his life (which is as complicated as you might guess) makes you question a lot of assumptions and beliefs. He became a character in the dream-like space of my song world, and when my first album, From Dust, was completed, there was a simple line at the bottom of the page, which is still there today:
[To] Uncle Jon, for being the one fan I truly believe. I dedicate From Dust to you.
It was the only album dedication, and the idea that I would dedicate my first and most significant album to Uncle Jon was a decision made early and without a shred of doubt. To a good person who had nothing, the dedication would be something good that's unable to be taken, unable to be sold. To a person who few would notice, the dedication would be our attention. To a person who time might easily forget, the dedication would be a memorial. And for whatever reason, as infrequent as our encounters were, his support and story really mattered to me. A person who has nothing and seems to want nothing may be the most sincere person I've ever met. And he loved my wife without conditions, and she loved him equally so. That's as good as it gets.
But this is no eulogy. When we got the news that he passed away last weekend, I did what I've done since the beginning, picked up a guitar and started to process. I thought back to From Dust, and our first encounters. His kindness. I went back and turned on When The Cowboy Rides Away, realizing for the first time that it has value I never intended in helping grieve the passing of someone. So I went and opened the original files from the track, muted the vocals, re-wrote some lines and spent the day re-recording it again as a tribute. I call it When the Cowboy Rides Away: Ride On Version, and you can listen to it below. It's not about Uncle Jon exactly, but as songs do it creates a place for some of those emotions to go. It certainly did for me.
Farewell, Uncle Jon. Thank you. From Dust is yours forever, and I wish you well, with love, on the next leg of your long ride.
