Diane.

NOTE: I wrote this in Summer of 2018. I’m posting it here for safekeeping as its original home is silently deleting long-form writing.

—

February 18, 2016 seems like it should have been longer ago than it actually feels.

That was the day my Uncle, Thomas Lynn Barnette, passed away in his hometown of Decatur, Alabama.

Tom and Diane

Now, I’ve gone on tangents about how he was my cool Uncle and how I wished to spend summers in Decatur at their home on Runnymeade, playing with all the toys his boys, the closest things to brothers I’ve ever had, all left in their wake running off to be adults, while I was still a kid a few years too young to be a contemporary.

But Tommy, as much as I loved him, and I did, without condition, was only one half of the duo that made that home on Runnymeade and later on Penny Lane tick. The other half was the proud and fierce mama of four kids named John, Chrystina, Kelly and Kyle.

Clockwise — From top left (Tom, Chrystina, John, Kyle and Kelly

Aunt Diane. She was short and feisty. She would not hesitate to tell you the things you needed to hear, whether you wanted to hear them or not. Her love for my Uncle was the good stuff. They were frick and frack. You would rarely see one without the other. And she would jump right in and tell him he was wrong, or to correct some verbal error or pregnant pause. Regarding her saying things whether you wanted to hear them or not..she made me paranoid from like age 17 because of my hair having gel on it that I had a bald spot. I guess she was right, eventually, but the potential for it loomed large years before the hair actually, y’know, vanished.

She’d get onto me if I was being a jerk (guilty as charged) and would treat my sarcasm as fact, telling me why things I said that were clearly bad ideas being said as if they were good ones, were in fact, y’know, bad. I would accept these corrections and keep on moving. I don’t know that she had a lot of time for my nonsense, but then again, a very rare few do. She humored me and always let me know where the ice cream was. For this I was grateful.

Of course now I think back on who all loved ice cream the most besides her and Tom and myself…and realize I’m the last one left and all three of us were diabetics.

Yaaaay!

I’m not sure if she knew that fairly recent fact, about the diabetes, as we hadn’t talked in a few years. My only point of contact with a great deal of my family that does talk to me is through Facebook and I guess I said one too many curse words for her and found myself on the end of a block. I took it wrong and got all offended. It’s what I do. I’m working on it.

I think generational gaps and her having put up with four boys and then multiple generations of grand-kids and great grand-kids had her busy enough to not wanna see what I had to say, which I agree is probably the right thing for your sanity if you don’t like my brand of nonsense. I eventually just found it amusing and stopped being offended by it. Just a quirk. She’s out there being Diane, and knowing that was good enough for me. At least I’d hoped she was doing alright. I had no way of knowing, without stirring up things that are best laid to bed.

What I do know though, is that of all the people on this planet that I have been around for any extended period of time, that she had, by leaps and bounds, done her fair share of suffering. She’d been sick some way or another since I can remember. Always something. Ailments on top of ailments. I heard tales of her younger days as an active mother, going on band trips, doing her thing with all four of the boys, who, I assure you, have myriad and varied likes and dislikes…so I can only assume she was pulled thin by that.

I didn’t know that Diane, but the one I did know usually had a kind word for me, and would give me a good hard hug around the neck when I bent way down to give her one.

Diane and Tom

The last time I saw her was, I think, back in the mid 2000’s. I went to Decatur for work, producing a tv show we did at the time. It just so happened the production was in the town my dad grew up in so I saw a great opportunity to see her and my uncle and my cousin Kyle, who was staying with them at the time.

It was a fun night of jokes and goofin’ off and ice cream eating on a screened in porch.

I thought to myself a few times the old Kurt Vonnegut line of “If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.”

You never know when you’re going to see the people you love last. I sit here now, on my lunch break, hammering this out and wondering what the heck life even is. I’ve alienated a lot of my family by being stubborn and judgmental and intolerant of things that I see as limiting and there’s a weird disconnect where I want to be part of something bigger but realize that I’m part of something far smaller.

Don’t get me wrong, in the way that any family member loves another — I loved my Aunt Diane, but I’m realizing that at heart, I didn’t really know her. I hurt, badly, for those that did. Who gained her favor and had her love and got to learn from her life and her experiences growing up and going to Auburn and meeting my Uncle and starting a family and being alive during some of the most transformative times in history.

Looking back I will remember little things like her letting me ride with her in her little red VW Bug one day in Decatur with the convertible top down. I just felt so cool. I was not, but I felt that way. It didn’t mean anything. It was just a rare moment of her and I and no one else around. It’s mine now. No one else has it.

Far as things I do wish I’d taken is that I wish I’d taken the time, or had the opportunity to know her better. I don’t know if it was a generational thing or just us not clicking or both of us just thinking “ah, there’ll be more time later” to figure each other out. Heck, I don’t know that she ever gave it a second thought. I always wanted to know her back story. I don’t know that the opportunity is there now. At least not filtered through a multi-generational version of the telephone game. Things get garbled between telling’s and eventually the story is the truth and the truth is forgotten.

Basically, there are regrets. I wish her kids and their families, and her grand-kids and their families all the love I can muster…I hope you guys stay strong through this and I hope you’re at peace knowing that her many, many years of suffering are done now.

February 18, 2016 doesn’t seem that long ago. But sometimes it feels like eternity.

And for 900 days, to the day, Diane was here on Earth without her other half.

Your children and friends and extended family will miss you for many reasons, and I have my reasons, too. I wish I’d tried harder. I am mostly just having a moment, fighting the pressure behind my eyes, hoping that for the first time in a long time, that you’re not in pain any longer.

I love you.

-Matt