Death and my family aren’t good friends. While I can’t imagine Death being good friends with many beings, Death and I need to go a few rows.
I found out earlier this afternoon that one of my uncles is in the Hospital. If he were to pass, he’d be the most recent known death for me family-wise. I say “known” because most of those type of people – grandparents and such – were gone before I ever knew it.
I know what I should feel: Sorrow, worry – I should be more concerned about his health. He was the Uncle that I had seen more growing up, the one who could work on automobiles and make them work, the one with the house near the river at one time.
He’s also the one who treated and used most of my family very shittily. The one who got more from my grandparents, then when he failed to make payments and they were forced to sell his house, the one who gave them a hard time over it . The one who used my sister and mother for storage, for money, for all sorts of other BS.
More important than that: He’s the one who criticized my father for choosing not to be a part of my life – then chose later not to be a part of it either. I don’t remember seeing him since before I moved out on my own the first time – He was at my grandma’s wake, but I don’t remember him there.
To put some context: My grandmother’s memorial was in 2001, and I moved out the first time in 1999 – so it’s been 17 years.
He has given hell to my other uncle and mother, to my sister and former brother-in-law – but I was never a concern.
There’s a part of me that really wants to say “fuck you” to him, to ignore his death (should that come) and anything more to do with him – but there’s another part of me who’s worried about the people he affected: His daughter, who told me about this development; My mom and other Uncle, my sister. My hope is that, if he only has a little time left, he makes an effort to repair the damage he created with them. (I’ll save him a little trouble: I was nothing to him for the past 17 years – so I have no reason to want or expect that sort of change. He distanced himself from me before anyone else, and I have very little for him other than motivation to get his shit together with everyone else.)
It touches another part of me, though: It’s been a couple of years since I had last seen my cousin’s kid, months before tonight since I had seen my niece and nephew, and I’ve not seen a couple of my cousins – one of which now has kids – in years. (Those kids, BTW, I’ve yet to meet.)
This is just on my mom’s side – on my dad’s side, the only nieces and nephews I know about I haven’t seen in a few years as well.
I find it weird and sad being that adult who doesn’t have that connection to the kids in his family – and yet feeling nothing but anger and numbness towards the relatives of my life who chose to do the same to me. While no one will ever top my father for the amount of anger and pain his absence has given me, it saddens me how I am also a little like my uncle was to me.
I can argue all I want about how little I know about kids and family, about how much I suck with interpersonal relationships, but at the end of the day, how am I any better? How can I learn to help them?
Sometimes we need reminders of what is important in life, of how much of an impression we can leave on those connected by blood, familial, and friendship ties. While I shouldn’t be “their best friend,” I should try to be like the distant uncle was for me: Someone they can look up to and learn from, someone they may not be able to have daily contact with but who makes that contact mean something. They may not be my direct flesh and blood – but they shouldn’t have to feel numb about me as I do about my Uncle.
Sleep has finally caught up to me, and no amount of anger or sadness will change it.
The Thoughts of Wayne Winquist 