My great uncle bill is dying in a hospital bed from kidney failure and I opted out of going to see him. I want to see him again but I dont want it to be in a setting that depressing. I already found my grandpa when I was three, then my great grandpa died in his home shortly before my mom and I arrived. There is also that whole thing with my uncle dying from necrotizing fasciitis and stealing my mom for a month. What I didn't tell you was one-third of his ashes rest in my house. My mom says it's so she can pick him up and smack him around a little, but I think my family has an obsession with death.
I wonder if in ten years my feeling on this subject will change?
What I have been reluctant to mention to anyone is, yesterday, this bed my mom calls the dead bed because all the pictures on the head board are coincidentally of dead relatives and she has an obsession with the grateful dead; well, one of the head board's doors was open revealing to me a card to my mom from my grandma. In this card, my grandma is pleading for her to stop drinking before the monster destroys her life. I don't know why the door was open or how it got that way, but I'm stuck thinking it was a message from beyond the grave. I don't have any clue how these two things might have in common, but I'm sure it's something. The card was dated 1987, I would of been two years old, and in a year's time I would walk into my grandpa's house to find him "sleeping" in his chair, middle of the after noon with the TV on. I don't really remember fight for life, or any of the paramedics, and my mom her friend stayed really calm. So, the only memory I have of my grandpa is him slumped over in his chair, and I don't want my great uncle bill's current condition replacing all the good memories I have of him. I hope this doesn't sound selfish, but I feel that I am not stable enough mentally to be there to support the family. Depression and mortality don't mix well. They actually mix very well together, often with one you get the other, and I should stay a way.
I'd rather remember the better times. The weddings, him talking about his garden, or teaching me how to sharpen a knife. Then there's that time when it was the end of winter he was showing me how to fly fish in a mountain stream, and afterwards while walking back to the cabin I broke through the top layer of snow and into a drift that was at least up to my waist. GeFreein myself took laying flat on my stomach and rolling over onto my back to free my legs. I looked at him like a father figure, like all the males in my family, they replace the one missing at home.
April 30, 2008 | July 6, 2008