Saying Goodbye

I began this post as a way to say goodbye to my Uncle Marvin, who died last week at age 99 at his home in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Uncle Marvin fashioned himself as a “lover and adventurer of the early 1940s,” words put on a coffee mug his family created as a gift to guests at his 90th birthday party. Without question, Uncle Marvin—brash, sarcastic, intelligent, curious—lived a long and fruitful life, instilling love of family in three generations after his own. (The photo with this blog, by the way, shows Uncle Marvin, who had decided to stop wearing toupees, kindly offering me one.)

During my trip to West Palm, I also had dinner with a childhood friend and her spouse, who over the past 20 years during my occasional visits to Florida I’d gotten to know better after we reconnected on Facebook.

But throughout a day of mourning, hugs and reconnection with visiting family members and friends, I had a moment of insight about another profound aspect of this trip.

I’m saying goodbye to Florida.

When my mother decided to relocate to Boca Raton in 1990, she initiated my older generation’s migration south from New York. At one point, I had nine relatives on my mother’s side and four on my father’s side in South Florida. After my mother’s death in 2017, her sister moved to North Carolina to be near her daughter. Uncle Marvin was the last of the Florida contingent.

In any event, I couldn’t shake the insight: I’m done with Florida.

I’ve made dozens of trips here over the years, first from Connecticut and for the past 22 years from North Carolina. Many joyous family reunions took place. My two kids, my sister’s three kids, Uncle Marvin’s grandkids and later great grandkids bonded during trips to zoos, nature preserves and raucous early bird dinners at remarkably average restaurants that the older generation favored. And stole Sweet & Low packages from.

The year my mother successfully battled colon cancer, I made six weekend trips. The last year of her life and after she died, I was there multiple times again at her condo in Century Village, the senior living complex that all of her relatives followed her to. A place my onetime boss, who’d earlier in his career worked for a Florida paper, told me was known to journalists as “Cemetery Village.” I laughed about that then, and remembered the joke, obviously. It was accurate, though.

Another insight I gained during this trip to say goodbye to Uncle Marvin is realizing that a phrase I’ve previously used for people, can be applied to places, too. Just like people, places come into our lives for a reason, a season or a lifetime. New York City, where I was born and raised, will always be a “lifetime” place for me. So will North Carolina.

As for Florida, with Uncle Marvin gone, I have no reason to contribute more dollars than necessary to a government that doesn’t think twice about demonizing groups of people and making life more difficult and costly for the very folks it needs to support the tourism industry so much of its economy is predicated on.

Ron DeSantis may be on his term-limited way out of office but I have little faith in Florida’s state legislature. Even though in the recent election, 57% of Floridians voted in favor of a measure to ease the state’s six-week abortion ban, the Republican-led state government had altered the rules to require a 60% threshold for a vote overturning legislative action.

Now normally, I might have thought not to turn a blog meant to memorialize a relative into a political diatribe. But here’s the thing. My Uncle Marvin, bless his heart, read more—newspapers, books, magazines—than you can imagine, right into this year. His love for Israel only slightly outweighed his distaste for political grifters. Uncle Marvin in 2016 at age 91 canvassed for Hillary Clinton. He read the dictionary daily seeking out new words. He was a critical thinker.

I can imagine his voice as I write this blog. “Leslie, you don’t need to come back here. Why would you want to come back here? If you want to go somewhere, go to Israel.”

So, goodbye, Florida. And here’s to you, Uncle Marvin, leaving this “season” place for a lifetime home.