Long day. Long Weekend. Long everything.
An
Uncle of mine died last week. The
funeral was on Sunday. My family couldn't go. Too long to
drive, too
expensive to fly. In January My mom and I are going to have to drive out, though, to pick up some
things. It didn't really hit me until today. I was walking to class listening to
Polly Jean's cover of
Is that all there is? and I just burst into
tears.
This is all there is. But, I wasn't crying because
this sucks, on the contrary, I felt very
lucky.
Family is a
complicated thing, at least for me, I have no reason to assume it's different for other people. You could say that he was the
creepy uncle that no one ever talked about. I was too
young to remember, but his marriage broke up over an issue of
domestic violence. Which is to say, he was violent with his
children. One of whom has no contact with the
family whatsoever. (Which is sad, because she is the other
geek girl in the family.) However, that's not how
I remember him. He used to always come and visit at
Christmas with his Father. He liked
brussel sprouts and classic movies. I think the first time I saw Casablanca (well, the first
twenty minutes of it, I fell asleep) was with him in our
living room. When
I think of Christmas, that is one of the
first things that pop into my head. He hasn't visited since Grandpa died, and we've moved, but that's still a very powerful
memory for me. He will be missed.