This is happening too often
I know somewhere in this blog, that I have said that the things we lose sometimes shape us more than the things we gain.
I lost my Uncle Bill yesterday.
This was not unexpected, as he had been battling leukemia for several months, but it seems kind of unfair. Uncle Bill had battled back from surgery to remove tumors from his spine, that had left him bed ridden for three years, and had just recovered from a hip replacement.
Now he dies from the same cancer that took my best friend from me 10 years ago.
I find myself strangely resigned to all of this. I don’t have a lot of feelings of grief right now. I think regret is a better word. Regret for a life ended too soon. And I feel bad for my Dad. He has lost two siblings in less than 3 months. When Aunt Phil died, he slipped into such a depression, that he wound up in the hospital. The official diagnosis was pneumonia, but I am not sure if the pneumonia caused the depression, or the depression caused the pneumonia. What I do know is that he is still recovering from it. He seems to be taking this better, since Uncle Bill was sick already, and Aunt Phil just died in her sleep, but I am most worried about Dad at this point.
We went to a reunion and birthday party for my Great Uncle a couple of weeks ago. He is 90. He has really been the only grandparent I ever had, at least that I can remember. The thought crossed my mind at the party, as I looked at Uncle Ralph, that the leadership of this family is fading. My dad was part of a family of seven. When all of my uncles and aunts were alive, we would have the most marvelous family reunions. We would go to each other’s houses for Holidays, and we had to have weddings in the biggest churches in town, just to hold all of the family members. Since the uncles and aunts started dying off, we see less and less of each other. I have cousins that I have not seen in decades, and we live in the same town.
Some of my cousins have children that I have never met, and might not even know exist. That bothers me a lot for some reason. Our family is one of the largest in this area. So many of the kids have gone through the local Catholic grade schools and High Schools, that we should be getting a volume discount by now.
The fact is, that I could pass some of them on the street and not recognize them. I wish there was some way I could change this. But times have changed I guess. My family hardly ever sits down to eat meals together any more. We barely have time to do anything more extravagant than to nuke some hot dogs, or make grilled cheese, and we are out the door again to the next activity.
Maybe the thing that I will learn from all of this is the need to reel the family back in and sew new seeds of togetherness.
We will see
Peace
I lost my Uncle Bill yesterday.
This was not unexpected, as he had been battling leukemia for several months, but it seems kind of unfair. Uncle Bill had battled back from surgery to remove tumors from his spine, that had left him bed ridden for three years, and had just recovered from a hip replacement.
Now he dies from the same cancer that took my best friend from me 10 years ago.
I find myself strangely resigned to all of this. I don’t have a lot of feelings of grief right now. I think regret is a better word. Regret for a life ended too soon. And I feel bad for my Dad. He has lost two siblings in less than 3 months. When Aunt Phil died, he slipped into such a depression, that he wound up in the hospital. The official diagnosis was pneumonia, but I am not sure if the pneumonia caused the depression, or the depression caused the pneumonia. What I do know is that he is still recovering from it. He seems to be taking this better, since Uncle Bill was sick already, and Aunt Phil just died in her sleep, but I am most worried about Dad at this point.
We went to a reunion and birthday party for my Great Uncle a couple of weeks ago. He is 90. He has really been the only grandparent I ever had, at least that I can remember. The thought crossed my mind at the party, as I looked at Uncle Ralph, that the leadership of this family is fading. My dad was part of a family of seven. When all of my uncles and aunts were alive, we would have the most marvelous family reunions. We would go to each other’s houses for Holidays, and we had to have weddings in the biggest churches in town, just to hold all of the family members. Since the uncles and aunts started dying off, we see less and less of each other. I have cousins that I have not seen in decades, and we live in the same town.
Some of my cousins have children that I have never met, and might not even know exist. That bothers me a lot for some reason. Our family is one of the largest in this area. So many of the kids have gone through the local Catholic grade schools and High Schools, that we should be getting a volume discount by now.
The fact is, that I could pass some of them on the street and not recognize them. I wish there was some way I could change this. But times have changed I guess. My family hardly ever sits down to eat meals together any more. We barely have time to do anything more extravagant than to nuke some hot dogs, or make grilled cheese, and we are out the door again to the next activity.
Maybe the thing that I will learn from all of this is the need to reel the family back in and sew new seeds of togetherness.
We will see
Peace
posted by Troubador @ 7:51 AM
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