In Memory

It’s been quite some time since I wrote a memorial post.  I don’t think I had the blog a month before my favorite grandpa, my mother’s father, passed away suddenly.  I still have a hard time when I hear his voice on my grandma’s answering machine.  He was supposed to be here when I moved back to my hometown.  He was supposed to watch Looney Tune Cartoons with my boys.  He was supposed to help me fix things around my house.  He was supposed to call me by my childhood nickname and play this tapping game we had played since I could remember.  But he’s not.

Friday, my dad’s baby brother passed.  We knew it was coming.  His melanoma had returned in September.  This time he had a tumor in his brain and on his spine.  Even with surgery, chemo, and radiation, in January, the doctors could not keep up with the cancer.  It was a matter of weeks. 

My uncle was not perfect.  A child of divorce, the youngest of six.  I’m sure he was caught in the middle when his father remarried and his second wife actively worked to get rid of her stepchildren and have the house to her own children.  He had a wild youth, which lasted a little longer than it should have.  I have six cousins because of him.  I have never met two of them.  I don’t think I ever will.  But he turned his life around, raised his children and married his long-time girlfriend.  He found happiness in Christ.  He worked as a janitor at an elementary school, where the kids loved him.  He started playing the school’s Santa Claus, and the last several years he dressed up for his grandson and my boys for Christmas Eve.  His grandson loved it.  My boys were terrorized by it, until last year.  Out of all my uncles, he never made an effort to be an uncle, but I never had any problems with that.  I had other uncles.

It’s weird to see my cousins post things on Facebook about their uncle.  His kids are silent.  Which is understandable.  My grandma is taking this very hard, but my dad hinted it had more to do that no one will letting her arrange the services.  Which makes sense, he went to a different church, he should have them there.  But still, she just lost her baby son, the mama’s boy.  My dad once said the family will start breaking apart once people started to pass.  He meant his parents, but now I wonder if this will be the first blow.  I only see my little cousins on Christmas Eve.  I went away for college and then stayed to start a family.  They all grew up and moved on in my absence.  I wonder if my aunt and my cousins will keep coming over for Christmas Eve or move on.

I don’t feel the way I did when my grandpa passed.  I haven’t shed a tear.  I don’t have a desire to speak at the memorial.  I even debated not going.  As cold as it is, his death would have ruined our plans if he had passed next week.  But my cousins.  My little cousins.  It’s not fair that they lost their dad so early in their life.  Even though my mom pointed out they are all older than 18, I still think it’s too young for them to lose their dad.  While my grandma is crazy and I hardly see my grandpa, it must hurt to lose your son.  And my aunt.  I have known her nearly my whole life.  My uncle only got around to marrying her my senior year in college (and I thought my dad was joking when he told me).  To lose your husband must be a pain so great there are hardly words.

To my uncle, may he finally have found what he was searching for.