To a lot of you reading this, you only know me as the Illustrious Mr. Charlton, a silly moniker I took upon years ago when I started writing on the intertubes. There might be one person who actually calls me that in real life, but most people know me by my legal name;

Sandy Lee Charlton.

Now, I’ve been known to get some flack over my name, mostly the fact that apparently this is a woman’s name, and I happen to have a penis. To this day, as in a woman recoiled in amusement at the mention of my name less than a week ago, people still think it’s weird that my name is Sandy. And plenty of people burst into hysterics when they find out my middle name is Lee. So let’s talk about my name, and where it comes from.

I’m not going to dwell too much on the first or the last part of my name. Sandy is a derivative of Alexander, which means defending people. Charlton, my surname, means settlement of free people. Combine the two and my name basically means The Defender of the Settlement of Free People. Which by itself is pretty cool and completely badass. The coolest part of my name isn’t the first or the last part of my name, it’s the middle part. Because even though it may seem like my dad was planning some sort of ‘Boy Named Sue’ type thing for me, my father named me after his twin brother, my uncle Lee.

My uncle Lee, along with my aunt Susan, has four children, James, Nick, Robyn, and Cody, all of whom are older than me. Their youngest son, Cody, is about nine months older than me, so I’m certain my folks decided to start making babies the moment they saw him (which is strange, because rumor has it that Cody was a really ugly baby). I was the first of three boys, and I’m the only one who was named after another relative. Which is a shame for me, because I have to live up to my uncle Lee’s good name, and he’s a much better person than I am.

An incredibly handsome man with a pretty ugly child.

The last time I saw my uncle was when my father passed away. I’ve mentioned this to people, that my father’s twin brother was there when my pop’s was on his deathbed, and a lot of folks assumed that having my uncle there, who’s an identical twin of my dad, made the situation harder to deal with. Nothing could have been further than the truth. My father loved his brother, and having my uncle there in our family’s time of need made a bitter pill easier to swallow. Before the accident, I would have told you there wasn’t a person on Earth that could have made my father’s death less painful. Uncle Lee proved me wrong.

But it was the third last time I saw my uncle that solidified to me what kind of man he is. I was passing through from Victoria to Golden, and my father suggested I look him and my aunt Susan up, spend a day or two with them before heading home. Even though it was midnight, and I had called him maybe ten minutes before I actually got to Kamloops, he still had no problem coming to the bus depot to grab his nephew. Once we arrived back at the house, he and my aunt greeted me, made me a little food, and got me setup in the spare bedroom. Once that was done, my uncle Lee went out to a homeless shelter for the rest of the night to keep an eye on things.

It’s one thing to donate your money to a charity. It’s another thing to volunteer at a soup kitchen or the likes. I’m not disparaging either form of charitable acts. But it is a whole other ballgame to stay up for the entire night at a shelter to make sure people stay calm. He jokingly asked if I wanted to come and I politely refused. Maybe I should have taken him up on his offer. To this day, part of me is still ashamed that I didn’t tag along. Sure, I had just spent the better part of the day on a greyhound bus, but if a man in his late 50’s was able to stay up past his bedtime, surely a young man in his late 20’s would have been able to keep up.

My uncle Lee passed away last week, after a long battle with cancer. I haven’t written anything for the blog since I heard the news. Writing about anything else after finding out about his passing would have been tacky. He leaves behind my aunt Susan, his four wonderful children, and a smattering of grand kids. There isn’t a whole lot of comfort I can offer this far away from the rest of the family, but maybe these words will help. He was a better man than most, and certainly a better man than I. I’d be lucky if had a tenth of the heart he did.

Sincerely,

Sandy Lee Charlton

p.s. I should mention that not only did my father and my uncle look identical, they also sounded exactly alike. It wasn’t unusual to get a phone call, once a month, from my “dad” to ask me to do a chore like set the car on fire or fill the toilets with cement. Good times, uncle Lee, good times.

p.s.s. I should also mention that I am a dead ringer for both my father and my uncle. Almost uncanny.

p.s.s.s. I completely forgot, the only reason I stopped off in Kamloops was due to a highway accident. I was stranded in the bus terminal, it was actually more like two o’clock in the morning, and uncle Lee was going back to the shelter. Sometimes life throws a rock at your head, and sometimes that rock turns out to be a lump of gold. I’ll never forget that visit.