It's time

It's time...

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.

A call to action; a call for hope

After the rain, after the destruction

The sun peeks from behind clouds.

Dark skies part to make way

for the tomorrow that must come,

for people to rescue, comfort, mourn.

After the rain, comes the sun,

bringing new life, new beginnings, hope.

Let us be the rays of sun

to light the dark days ahead.

Let us be hope personified, that

our Japanese brothers, sisters turn to

like sunflowers turn to the sun;

to grow, to blossom, to live.

For every comment left here today, I will donate $1 to Save the Children for the littlest victims of Japan's earthquake and tsumani.

Will you heed our call?  The American Red Cross and Save the Children are currently taking donations for Japan's earthquake and tsumani victims.

 

Want to learn more about Six Word Fridays?  Visit Melissa at Making Things Up.

A life, as told in pictures

Monday night, my husband and I had my sister come over to watch the boys. The reason? One of our closest friend's grandmother had passed away.

Normally, I am this family's official representative at funerals. John, squeamish about the whole business of death and funerals, will stay with the kids.

But these are our closest friends. I have known D since I was thirteen years old.   We went to junior high together.  We went to high school together and managed to hang out during breaks from college.  D met M at college.  They moved down here and we become inseparable. They came to our wedding, we were part of their wedding party two years later. I found out I was pregnant with Matthew the day before M's first baby shower. I baptized M two and a half years later. Our kids consider themselves family. Because we are.

D has lost all four of his grandparents within the last four years. His mother, whose mother died, is an only child. She bore the responsibility of caring for her aging and sickly parents alone. She has now buried them.

So, Monday night, we drove in the bitter cold and went to sit with our friends. To hold their hands. To hug and whisper small words of comfort. To help lighten the burden of mourning. Again.

As the priest quietly said Mass, I held John's hand. I looked down and saw how much are hands have changed as they lay intertwined. How much they have stayed the same. I wondered what life has in store for us, how we will handle all the unknowns that lay before us.

After the funeral Mass, we made our way to see D's family, especially his mother, to offer our condolences. We noticed that they had made a display of pictures. Pictures that chronicled the life that had now passed from this one. A young woman. A bride next to her uniformed groom. A mother with her daughter. The first picture of the day they arrived to the United States to live out the American dream.

In viewing those pictures, I recognized some of the events, chuckled at how young we all looked, smiled at good times that are now memories. The life of this eighty four year old woman, reduced to photographs gleaned from a lifetime of memories. Of the happiest moments shared with her family, captured for all time.

I thought of all the other moments.  The ones we carry imprinted on our hearts.  The countless other moments that have no image other than the one deep within our souls. The ones we carry and browse through in the dark moments of sorrow.

It got me thinking.

How will our children display our lives when we pass? What conversations will come about as they glance at a picture of their father and I, captured in a moment of happiness? What will they remember of their own childhood? What stories will be told?

What kind of mother will they remember?

The week has been a blur. I have been short-tempered, tired, anxious. It has been too cold. The mornings have been hard. I haven't been able to run. I have been able to shake the creeping anxiousness.

Too many sad anniversaries are coming up. My aunt has been gone for a year. My grandfather has been gone for twenty two. Our dog has been gone for four years. My sister in law's mother passed on my sister in law's birthday, the very next day.

And yet, within that sadness, we will celebrate Susan's birthday. And our anniversary next week. And Christmas ten days later.

And there will be more pictures to chronicle this life together. As a family. As individuals.

To remember. To revisit. To comfort.