My uncle died this morning.
He was the only one I've ever had, to be technical, though my grandfathers' brothers were all uncles by default as per tradition until they all died but I was so young when that happened it didn't seem so final the way it does now and I've spent much of the day in a fog, vaguely teary but mostly angry as that's how grief is for me now. Why the fuck do we even bother with stupid shit like buying tires and weeding the garden when we're all just going to die. Why pay the power bill? Why take my vitamins?
It's all just going to end abruptly and without warning and then someone's going to have to make a round of phone calls and once everyone is duly notified you stop and take a breath.
Then your brain does that awful thing where it runs down everything you remember about that person, neatly packaging it up for you into a little compartment, labelling it with their name, and it puts it in a dark corner where you won't trip over it, and it says to you quietly,
There. We'll just leave this here for you.
And you wonder how long it will be before you forget the sound of their voice, or what they look like. And your brain tries to interrupt all those destructive lines of thinking with comforts about heaven, that you'll see them again, that there's a reunion to look forward to, but you know better because first you get to spend another fifty or sixty years on earth (if you're lucky ooooh boy next person who says that to me better be getting a head start.) buying tires, taking vitamins, and coping with death.
Like a good girl.
I hate today. I hate the fact that I didn't see him over the past many years. I hate the fact that I can't be peaceful and comfortable with death instead of seething with quiet rage over it, as if I could conjure up enough anger and make it go away somehow, as if I could scare it off.
As if I could just make it wait, because I'm not ready for any more of it.
Not yet.
