Joe Rondeau rests his feet in a lean-to on the Raquette River north of Long Lake. (Provided photo — Andy Flynn)

Life. It’s about time — the time we spend with each other, the time we have left, the time we spend with each other with the time we have left.

In June 2014, my mother’s brother, Joe Rondeau, was in town with his wife, Madaline, to support me walking the Lake Placid Half Marathon after I lost more than 80 pounds. They traveled from their home in Sea Cliff, on the north shore of Long Island. They didn’t need to visit, but they did, and that meant a lot.

During a stop at my home in Saranac Lake, Joe took the time to write down a few words in my second book, “New York State’s Mountain Heritage: Adirondack Attic, Vol. 2.” Now the page is marked with a piece of paper that states, “Joe’s feet.”

When you turn to page 188, you see a full-length image of the front left corner of a lean-to. A life preserver hangs on a nail just under the roof, canoe paddles lean against the front log, and two feet rest on a small tent bag.

These are Joe’s feet, as seen during a canoe trip we took from Long Lake to Tupper Lake in the summer of 2004. The lean-to was on the Raquette River near the confluence of the Cold River. I asked him to sign the photo.

Joe Rondeau poses before getting to the Northville-Placid Trail trailhead north of Piseco in June 2002. (Provided photo — Andy Flynn)

“To Andy. Had a good trip. Keep trying new experiences. Uncle Joe Rondeau.”

On the surface, these words sound off the cuff, maybe a little corny. But I assure you, they are powerful, carefully chosen words, spoken from the heart, and they say a lot about Joe’s frame of mind and outlook on life at that moment. He’d already cheated death by defeating cancer, knowing he may only have a short amount of time to complete an ever-growing bucket list in case cancer ever came back. Well, cancer did come back, and it eventually killed him, but not before he’d tried many new experiences of his own.

I also used that photo of Joe’s feet on the back cover of the 2019 edition of “New York’s Adirondack Park: A User’s Guide,” another book I wrote and self-published.

“He was very proud of the photo,” my mother, Michele (Rondeau) Flynn, said as she thought of memories I could use in his eulogy. “He loved showing people his feet.”

I wrote the eulogy after putting last week’s issue of the Lake Placid News to bed on Wednesday, Aug. 11. But I left the feet story out. There were too many other memories from my mother, and there was a tight deadline. I was writing the eulogy during his wake, and the funeral was the next day, when my twin brother Steve would read it. He made the trip from Colorado to Long Island, and Mom and I were still in Saranac Lake; we watched the funeral on her iPad in her Saranac Village at Will Rogers apartment via the church’s livestream broadcast Thursday morning.

Joe Rondeau makes dinner along the Northville-Placid Trail near the Jessup River, north of Piseco, in June 2002. (Provided photo — Andy Flynn)

Joe Rondeau died of cancer on Friday, Aug. 6, exactly one week before his 75th birthday. He was my mother’s only sibling, and our families have always been close. Without a reliable presence of a father growing up, my uncle was a father figure to me, and I had many fond memories of our families’ times together. They visited us a lot in the Adirondacks after our family moved here, and we visited them a lot on Long Island while growing up.

Less than a week before Joe died, my mother, Steve and I drove to Sea Cliff to see Joe one last time. It was Sunday, Aug. 1, and he had just come home from the hospital the day before. Hospice arrived the day after our visit.

We spent Sunday afternoon with our Aunt Madaline and three cousins — Kathy, Christine and Laura — and Christine’s husband Ken. It was bittersweet. We appreciated the chance to see each other, and we shared many laughs over a wine-and beer-filled lunch, but the undercurrent of emotions was too much at times. We’d laugh one minute and start crying the next. We took turns visiting Joe in his mancave, where he had watched so many New York Mets games on TV. Lying in a hospital bed, he couldn’t talk or hear very well, so it was difficult to communicate, but we each had a chance to say goodbye. My aunt said later that he appreciated the visit.

Even while he was asleep, Joe’s feet kept moving. My mother said he had restless feet since he was a kid.

The eulogy was filled with my mother’s memories of Joe — how he was impatient from the moment of his birth, how he became a cat person and how his love of the outdoors began during a Boy Scout trip to the Lake George region of the Adirondacks in the early 1960s.

Joe Rondeau takes a photograph while canoeing on Long Lake in August 2004. (Provided photo — Andy Flynn)

“Joe didn’t always buy his outdoor gear,” my mother recalled. “Sometimes he made it. When he and Madaline got their first apartment, he decided to build a canoe — in the living room. When it was time to take the canoe out, they couldn’t get it through the door. So he had to take it apart in sections, and put it back together outside, before he could use it.”

Many of my memories of Joe were made on Long Island, the home of our family — a mix of Irish and Scotch on my father’s side and French Canadian and Polish on my mother’s. Their ancestors settled in Glen Cove, where Steve and I lived until moving day — June 26, 1976 — just shy of our 7th birthday in September, when we entered the second grade at L.P. Quinn Elementary School in Tupper Lake.

During our visits to Long Island in the late 1970s and 1980s, we stayed a lot at Uncle Joe and Aunt Madaline’s house. We’d visit New York City, maybe stop at the Coast Guard Station on Governors Island (he was a Vietnam veteran, serving in the Coast Guard), have lunch in Chinatown or see a Mets game at Shea Stadium. (I still have a ticket stub from a game we attended on Joe’s 37th birthday, Aug. 13, 1983, against the Chicago Cubs. It was Tom Seaver’s last win at Shea.) We’d go swimming at the Sea Cliff beach or visit Theodore Roosevelt’s home at Sagamore Hill in nearby Oyster Bay. There was always something to do or some relative to visit.

In the Adirondacks, the Rondeaus liked to camp as a family, whether it was in Tupper Lake, where Joe’s Coast Guard buddy Frank Scotti ran the Blue Jay Campsite, or in Warrensburg near the Schroon River.

Joe also spent a lot of time paddling, hiking and backpacking alone or with friends and family — along the Appalachian Trail, on the trails of Great Britain and in the Catskill and Adirondack state parks. I spent time with him on two of those trips, a hiking trip on the Northville-Placid Trail from Piseco to the West Canada Lakes in June 2002 and a canoeing trip from Long Lake to Tupper Lake in August 2004.

Tablet at the grave of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in Oyster Bay, Long Island. (Provided photo — Andy Flynn)

When we were in the woods or on the waterways, we didn’t talk much. In fact, we each hiked at our own pace and met up later — he being the fast hiker and me being the slow one. Eventually, we’d stop at a lean-to or a campsite, make dinner, wash up and go to sleep in our own tents. It was mostly small talk.

One of my favorite photos of Joe was taken at a Jessup River campsite along the Northville-Placid Trail. Dressed in a tuxedo T-shirt, hiking pants, white socks and sandals, he was sitting on a small rock while making dinner with a portable stove inside a fire ring. You could tell he was having the time of his life.

I didn’t need words of wisdom from Joe. The simple fact that he had survived cancer already by the early 2000s was inspiration enough. His actions spoke volumes. He led by example. Joe began making trips around the world to check things off his bucket list. He was living his own words, “Keep trying new experiences,” and he was living the words of Theodore Roosevelt (placed on a metal plaque at the former president’s grave), “Keep your eyes on the stars and keep your feet on the ground.”

Joe did try to give me advice once in a while. I was in high school or college, before he retired from the phone company, and he suggested I get a steady job with a good pension — a job like his. But early on I wanted to be an actor, then have a job in the music business, then work in public radio. I didn’t listen to him; in fact, I dismissed it right away. I couldn’t see working for the phone company. Now, as one of the few journalists left in a dwindling newspaper business — without a retirement plan — perhaps he was right.

Even with Joe gone, I still have a lot to learn from him. It’s about the time we spend with each other, the time we have left, and the time we spend with each other with the time we have left.

My mother’s final words in the eulogy were, “Goodbye, little brother. Till we meet again.” I’m not religious, so I can’t say the same. But I will say, “Goodbye, Uncle Joe. Thanks for the memories. I’ll try to make you proud as I try new experiences.”

Now it’s time to start my own bucket list.