I’ve been going back and forth with this post for a few days now, trying to come up with the best way of writing it. Trying to come up with some sort of, I dunno…concept or something for it. But there is no way to do anything at all with this, so I’m just going to get it out of me before I go completely fucking insane.
We found out about a week ago that my Uncle Doug was really sick and had been hospitalized. My folks flew out to Ontario to be there, which was indication #1 that things were pretty damn bad. So I knew that the news wouldn’t be good, but that doesn’t make news magically any better to deal with when it inevitably comes.
Cancer everywhere. Nothing they can do except try to keep the pain from getting too bad. 6 months max. Thanks for coming out.
I find myself going back and forth from feeling despondent and feeling like I want to puke to just wanting to fly in to a rage and beat the living shit out of something. And then that’s followed by my wanting to kick my own ass for feeling in any way bad when it isn’t me facing my approaching end. I dunno, is there a way someone is supposed to feel right now? Maybe a memo I missed? I really hope someone can clue me in to a guideline for this so that maybe I can get that going for me or something. This whole feeling weepy and angry and miserable thing, and then getting angry and miserable over the fact that I’m feeling angry and miserable in the first place, really isn’t working out too well.
I find myself flashing back to 3 different things :
-My Uncle Doug was one of the relatives who we all saw this past summer when my youngest sister got married. Not a whole lot to really add that was momentous, but he was the same guy he’d always been : nice, friendly, and brimming with dry wit that would pop in when you least expected it. Aside from a bit more gray in the hair and a pretty awesome beard, basically the same guy. He hadn’t changed, and that’s a very good thing.
-At some point during my youth, I made a foray in to putting together airplane models. One Christmas he and my Aunt Gillian sent me this really kickass P-51 Mustang. This was a really, REALLY nice model, a Smithsonian branded one that I happen to know was worth a fair chunk of money. I did get it built eventually, but it of course looked nothing like the box when it was done. But it was still cool to get. I wish I could find that model. I don’t really know what became of it.
-One of my first sets of memories is from when Uncle Doug and Aunt Gillian got married. It was over in England, and we (at that time ‘we’ was my parents, me and my sister Pam. I think I was somewhere between 3 and 4) went over for it. I don’t remember everything, just bits and pieces. A suitcase getting wedged in a London elevator, and this was an old school UK elevator that didn’t bounce the doors back when they met with a solid object, and my dad fighting the doors for ownership of the bag. A really big (and really drafty) hotel room. Little bits and pieces from around the city. And during the start of the wedding, when the bride passed in her dress and I quietly (you know, kid quietly…so really loud) asked my mom why Aunt Gillian was wearing a nightgown (followed by chuckling and smiles. Apparently I was playing for laughs even as a kid).
So that’s where it is. I don’t feel any better, but that isn’t why I wrote this. Maybe now I’ve blasted through the mental block that saw me staring at a blinking cursor every fucking time I tried to type up an email to my Uncle Doug. I want to say something. But I don’t know what to say at all. Thanks for coming out.
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