In Loving Memory...

We found out a few days ago that my uncle has died...

My sister – who I’ve been staying with for the past month – had come into my room early that morning, waking me up to say that my father had called with some bad news. He had gotten a voicemail message the night before from a woman in charge of the building where my uncle lived, on his own, in another city. The message said in a nutshell “it’s about your brother... please phone us back”

My father got the message too late to return their call the night he received it, as their offices were already closed, and it was too early to get any news yet that morning, as the office was not yet open. I called my father, who was understandably worried. He had been up most of the night. The best case scenario, he said, was that they were calling to say that his brother was in the hospital. The worst case scenario.... was obvious.

My uncle was never married and had no kids, so my father would be the official next of kin. The person who would be notified if the worst case was indeed the scenario.

An hour later, my father phoned us back, with bad news. I hung up the phone and got ready to race over to his apartment, to offer him the best kind of consolation I know how to give: a hug.

News like this tends to bring out uncharacteristic behaviours. Some odd, some funny. Things that in one moment are second nature to us, suddenly become seemingly impossible tasks. After I hung up the phone with my father, I went to get dressed, and standing there looking at a pile of clean clothes, I said to my sister, quite perplexed, “I don’t know where my clothes are!”. This was followed by a nervous laugh from both of us, given that I was staring right at them. When I said to my sister a few minutes later that I was ready to go, she said “you’re wearing pyjama bottoms”. I knew that. I simply meant that I was nearly ready to go, and just letting her know that I was seconds away from being fully ready. I think.

In the car on the way over to my dad’s, my sister and I had a little squabble. I didn’t want to get into a whole discussion about the impact that this death may have on my father. Whereas she was keen to. We all deal with adversity differently. I just wanted to digest it, quietly, in the short car ride over to my father’s. She, on the other hand, wanted to talk. It was her way of handling it, of processing it. Which was different from my own. We’re each entitled to react however we naturally tend to in these situations, but it seemed ridiculous to be arguing with my only sibling, after having just gotten news that my father had just lost his. I put my hand on hers, and explained that I just didn’t want to have a deep discussion right then, and she understood. And she cried.

At my father’s, warm hugs were exchanged. We discussed what had happened. And then things got more practical than emotional. We made lists of what needed to be done, and who needed to be notified. It was a bit of reminiscing, mixed with a lot of planning and organizing. Underneath it all, lay a strong sense of unity, of family, of supportiveness. Aside from a few phone calls that needed to be made, there wasn’t much we could do from here. My father and I made a plan to drive down the next day, to where my uncle had lived. A father-daughter road trip, to wrap up and pack up a brother/uncle’s life.

The rest of that day, was a mix of being on the verge of tears, and in tears. I sobbed myself to sleep that night.

I tried to figure out what I was so sad about, and who I was sad for.

My uncle wasn’t a man who I was ever close to. I never really got to know him very well. Or much at all. I’m not sure that anybody ever has. He had lived very much in his own universe, one which was very different from the one which most of us know. He didn’t shut us out exactly, but he barely let us in. He physically and emotionally isolated himself from others. There wasn’t much contact between us over the years, and when there was, it was always ‘safe’, he had always put up an emotional barrier.

So why, I kept asking myself, was I so sad to get news of his death?

I wasn’t sad for myself. I had had such little interaction with him over the years that I couldn’t honestly say that I would miss him. I was certainly sad for my father, for having lost the brother he knew, and the brother he was never given a chance to know. But the person I was really sad for, was my uncle. I lay in bed crying that night, wondering if he had ever felt love. If he had ever had the capacity for it. Maybe it’s presumptuous to think that he hadn’t, but regardless, I lay there, feeling sad for him. And feeling sorry for him.

The greatest gift life offers us, is the ability to love and to be loved.

Something we tend to take for granted.

And something he may have missed out on, in his 75 years on earth.

On the morning we found out that he had died, my father said to my sister and I that my uncle had led such a sad life, that he had always been so tormented. By his thoughts, by his demons, by his illness. He hadn’t chosen the mind he was born with, or to inhabit the mental world he lived in. None of us do, but most of us are born lucky, to have the minds and the lives that we have. We're truly blessed. I'm not sure that my uncle ever felt that he was. I just hope that now, his torment is over, and that his mind is finally at rest.

And may he rest in peace....