Readers, I abandoned you.
I have many reasons. Too many to
list. So many that they would make your
head swim.
As many of you who used to follow this blog knew, my uncle
and godfather had a health crisis two years ago and my sister and I took on him
and all his medical care. For the last
two years, we battled doctors, hospitals, dialysis and death, tooth and nail.
Last week, it all came to a head. And Death won.
I cannot describe what is was like to watch him come to
terms with his own mortality, when he had managed to escape it REPEATEDLY over
the course of 35 years. His biggest
victory was 19 years ago, when after being told that he had 6 months to live if
he didn't get a liver transplant, he managed to squeeze out almost 2 years AND
receive one of the first liver transplants the University of Miami ever
completed.
As I watched him listen to Pavarotti in his last few hours
last Sunday, he smiled with pleasure. He
lived a good life; filled with adventure and excitement. He got to say goodbye, he got to tell people
how much he loved them, he had my grandparents come and escort him to Heaven's
gates. He turned in his 80 year old body
battered and bruised. He truly put it
through hell as he sucked the marrow that life gave him.
For me, it has been hard.
Even though my sister and I did all that we could, we couldn't keep him
healthy enough to creak out another 5 years.
We have been second guessing ourselves for the last week, wondering what
we could have done differently. Even
though we lost our dad eleven years ago and should know that there is no
negotiating with God's will, it doesn't make it any easier the second time
around.
My uncle kept his life very compartmentalized. It was easy for him to do it. As a single man with no responsibilities, he
pretty much answered to no one and did as he pleased. It was hard for him to give up that
independence two years ago, when we took over his affairs and clucked at the
amount of Coke he consumed and how many ramen noodles he had stashed under his
kitchen sink. We reprimanded him on the
effects of too much sodium, too much soda, on his dialysis and failing kidneys. He would smile, tell us he would stop, and
continue to do whatever he pleased.
We met some of his closest friends the day before he
died. They flew cross country to be with
him in his final hours. They stood shoulder
to shoulder with my sister and I as he breathed his last. They came back to his apartment and told us
which of his paintings should get us the most money. They told us of the man they knew, one who
once decided that for a whole year, they should always have a bottle of champagne
whenever they got together. The man who
traveled to all the corners of the Earth and never gave a rat's ass about what
other people thought.
Today, I picked up his ashes. We will be having a funeral Mass and
interment sometime this week. As I
peered into the cardboard box that held his ashes and saw the toe tag that
undoubtedly hung from his foot, I wondered what he would make of being
contained in such a plain box when he had such a colorful life. I wonder how my mother and my aunt, his
sister will hold themselves together later this week, when they will see what
is left of someone they loved so much.
I find myself being stoic at times, afraid of unleashing the
sadness that is welling up in me. My
oldest son seems to sense that underneath all that strength, there is a very
sad little girl who misses the uncle who would show up with extravagant,
unpractical gifts and would disappear for month, years at a time. My boys and husband are cautious around me,
afraid that I will break. And that
worries me. And it makes me very sad.
It has been a hard year.
My mother continues to deteriorate.
Yesterday, my sister and I went to get her a wig, as the chemotherapy
has ravaged her head. All this in
preparation for a funeral. Now, her head
looks better, but her body continues to turn on her, robbing her of movement,
denying her comfort. I wonder how much
this will break her spirit when she watches the urn that holds her favorite
brother go into a wall, near her husband, near where she one day will be.
When we were leaving yesterday, my nieces spotted a small
little store that had just the kind of impractical, extravagant items that my
uncle would have been drawn to. I saw a
pink kitty umbrella that had caught my oldest niece's eye. My younger niece found a mermaid one.
And I did as my uncle would have wanted. I bought them those umbrellas and
smiled. Because I knew that somewhere in
the clouds, surrounded by beautiful things and clutching a champagne bottle in each
hand, singing along with Luciano, he was nodding in agreement. But I won't disappear for months, years. I will surround myself with the joy that these
two girls and my three sons give me, and hope that I get to say goodbye,
listening to beautiful music, surrounded by love.
