How I Learned to Drive monologue

I never saw him again. I stayed away from Christmas and

Thanksgiving for years after.
It took my uncle seven years to drink himself to death. First he
lost his job, then his wife and finally his drivers license. He
retreated to his house and had his bottles delivered. One night he
tried to go downstairs to the basement--and he flew down the
steep basement stairs. My aunt came by weekly to put food on
the porch-and she noticed the mail and the papers stacked up,
uncollected. They found him at the bottom of the stairs. Just
steps away from his dark room.
Now that I'm old enough, there are some questions I would have
liked to have asked him. Who did it to you, Uncle Peck? How old
were you? Were you eleven?
Sometimes I think of my uncle as a kind of Flying Dutchman. In
the opera, the Dutchman is doomed to wander the sea; but every
seven years he can come ashore--and if he finds a maiden who
will love him of her own free will--he will be released. And I see
Uncle Peck in my mind, in his Chevy '56, a spirit driving up and
down the roads of Carolina--looking for a young girl who, of her
own free will, will love him. Release him.