Friday, August 7, 1992

“My uncle T. died this morning, a heart attack, apparently in his sleep.”

**NOTE: Once again, this entry is from my own personal journal, but it details what was going on in my grandmother’s (and my) life at the time.

Friday, August 7, 1992

Life is so very fragile. My uncle T. died this morning, a heart attack, apparently in his sleep. He was only 56 and so full of life. He had so many plans. I had just really gotten to know him and, just this week, was feeling so close to him, like he was a father figure. He was so easy and fun to talk to, always ready with a laugh or a funny comment, even when things were hardest for him. He had just come through the ordeal over the past two months of getting his mother settled into the nursing home, becoming her Power of Attorney, having to deal with her shit and feeling like the black sheep all his life, putting up with an asinine brother, R.,(who made the unintelligent comment, “I don’t let this shit get to me,” when he found out about his brother’s death), and overly emotional sister. Add to all of that mounds of worry, worry, worry, plus a bad diet. Plus smoking, emphysema, and the fact that the doctor told him a year ago, he would die (which, of course, he told no one except his wife, J2.)

Why, God? I know there must be a master plan; I don’t believe in a “big dartboard in the sky” like Dad did. Maybe T.’s death now spared him from worse things to come. He always said he never wanted to live to be Mom-Mom’s age. J2 is having a rough time because she said she and T. had a bad fight before he went to sleep last night. She slept on the couch, and he died in bed, alone. I told J2 about the fight I had with Dad right before he died and how it was never really resolved; that I had gone through a lot of guilt about that, but that it’s a little better now. She replied to me, “You know how hard it is, then, when people tell you not to feel guilty.” I just hope it doesn’t break her down. She’s so strong.

T. is now with Dad and their father, my grandfather, J. T. can tell Dad all about what’s been going on and also how he always admired him, and just maybe, finally, they can be friends in the afterlife. I really believe T. was connecting with me tonight, somehow, because as J&P and R were trying to force Mom or I to take over Mom-Mom’s POA, all of a sudden, it came to me what T. had once said, just a few nights ag0, the last time I saw him: “A bank can do it.” He planted that idea in my head for a reason. I passed it on to my grandmother’s adult children, who can decide what to do with that information now.

The entire family gathered together that morning to go see my grandmother in the nursing home and break the news to her together, that yet another one of her children had passed away. Immediately she started crying and saying, “No, no, it can’t be true.” I remember bits and pieces of that time, but, as is often the case with many crises, it’s not a clear snapshot memory in my head. We were all so devastated by my uncle T.’s death, and it hit me especially hard, as I was really feeling like he was a second father to me. I will continue with some more of my grandmother’s story, through my own recollections, tomorrow.

Photo by Eyasu Etsub on Unsplash