Ahh.. life…

Thank you everyone for your emails and comments regarding my uncles death.
I’m fine. I’m sad, but I’m fine. I wasn’t very close to my uncle as an adult, however, as a child, I looked up to him.

I think the thing that is bothering me the most with his death is the realization that the loved ones I looked up to as a child are starting to pass away, or become very sick and it hurts.
I look at my grandfather. The man who would pick me up from kindergarten every Wednesday to go play miniature golf. He would pick me up and swing me around in the air and we’d laugh. Now, he can barely walk. He can’t control his nerves and loses control of his movements, he is in constant fear of another heart attack.
I think of my grandmother, the strongest woman I’ve ever known. She used to work 12 hours a day everyday in a factory, then come home and take care of her family. Cook, clean, take care of the yards, and on top of that she’d take care of us whenever we wanted to come over. Now, she walks with a limp, she has arthritis that keeps her in constant pain (yet she still knits booties and sweaters for children in orphanges) she gets short of breathe just walking from one end of the room to the other.
Those things are hard to deal with for me. Watching the people I love and admire grow old and sick and dying. That’s what hit me so hard when I got the phone call that my uncle had died on a motorcycle ride.
The funeral will be on Thursday or Friday, depending on how long it takes them to get his body back here to California. I think it’s going to be very hard to see all of the people I love in one room, some of them so old and sickly. But that’s how life works and this is just another lesson for me to learn to cherish each day with the people in my life right now.