Uncle Ray

I’m not sure that I can capture the essence of Uncle Ray. But it's time that I tried. He was such a character! Eccentric. Odd. Funny. Artistic. Original. Cultured. Full of life. He was never without a camera. Digital, film, video, black and white, vintage, his beloved point and shoot. He was definitely the historian of our family. He documented everything!

Uncle Ray was a traveler. He had been EVERYWHERE! I’m sitting here looking at his passports, the pages are filled, even the added ones. I’m about to hop on a plane myself in a few weeks, and it always makes me think of him. He fueled my passion for missions, simply because he loved to travel. He took pictures everywhere he went and then made a scrapbook of his trip. He would cut the pictures out, random people, and give them random captions. When we cleaned out his house there were closets full of binders! Cyprus, Greece, Egypt, India, Saudi Arabia, France, Sweden, Columbia, Ireland, Australia, China, Nepal…get the picture? Not only had he been everywhere, he’d been there multiple times. And everywhere he went, he always got spaghetti--
his favorite!

He was the one the introduced my sisters and me to Doris Day, Danny Kaye, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. He would record their movies and bring us stacks of VHS tapes. He taught me the value of money. I would iron his shirts for 25 cents…oh how I hated ironing! But he would never just give us money, we always had to earn it. Unless it was our birthday…or Christmas! He owned several old movie theaters in the Houston area and when I was old enough, I became his “accountant” of sorts. He had ledgers and we kept track of everything with pen and paper.

I got in my first car wreck with Uncle Ray in his brand new Mitsubishi Mirage. He forbid us to talk on the phone while driving and would constantly admonish us to keep our hands at “10 and 2”.

We would take countryside jaunts on the weekends, the six of us and Uncle Ray. He knew all the back roads of Texas and was constantly taking us on out-of-the-way shortcuts. Bluebonnets, Indian paintbrushes, antique stores, festivals, old small towns…we discovered so much on our Saturday excursions!

The best memories are of Easter. Every year Uncle Ray would put together an Easter egg hunt, it was actually three hunts in one, each one held at old, out of the way church’s. Uncle Ray would hard boil, hand paint and name dozens and dozens of eggs. At every stop he and my parents would hide them, we would find them and then the real fun would begin. Every name had a corresponding prize, could be a dud, could be cash, could be something we had to act out. And every hunt it changed. Talk about a lot of work! As we got older the hunt wasn’t just the four of us, friends would come from school, college, Tulsa, wherever we were, and they loved it! He made it so fun and ridiculous.

My current bro-in-laws were initiated to the family by living with Uncle Ray. My brother-in-law to be didn’t have the pleasure, but he was able to spend some time with him. Such a major part of our lives, I’m sad my husband will never know him.

He was so eccentric, he would paint things in the house with nail polish, order junk that didn’t have any purpose and had his own radio station—KRAP. It wasn’t really a radio station, just him recording music on tapes, later cd’s and “mc-ing” it. Born in 1924, he had so many incredible memories...living history!

We will forever remember Gritz. The "male" cat my mother gave him, we got the 3 AM call when Gritz gave birth to her kittens and watched the video he made of the event. He of course was forever known as the "he/she" cat and we never took mom's word on animal gender again. Then there were the hideously bright green pants that he wore and the "Ca-ca bird" trilogy. Written, produced, directed by Ray M Boriski, starring Ray M Boriski. All for the Picklo family.

Uncle Ray gave so much to our family. He was a constant for as long as I can remember. I remember when his wife passed. I remember how he was always gone at Christmas because he wanted to spend his birthday overseas. I remember waiting at the airport to pick him up and driving to drop him off. Wishing that one day I could get on the airplane and travel like he did.

In just a few weeks I head to Panama. This is my first time there and my first time, going to a new place where I haven’t been able to talk to Uncle Ray about it. I hadn’t realized how much I missed that.

I miss being able to talk about my trip with him.
I miss hearing what he loved about the country.
I will miss not getting to tell him about it when I get back.
I miss his “how ya doing girl?” and driving him to Sam’s to pick up his prints.
I miss his wit and his confident, calm reassurance.
Most of all, I miss him being a part of our family.

Raymond M. Boriski
December 13, 1924 - July 9, 2007