Dealing with death (Part II)

Well, as it turned out – my cousin in California would not be the only family I would lose over the course of a few months. Another phone call from my mom a couple of weeks ago informed me that my uncle in Oklahoma had a stroke. Now, when she first called and told me about it, she told me he was in the hospital, but that while he was paralyzed on one side he was still communicating with everyone fine and seemed ok mentally. My dad and brother have both suffered strokes years ago and are paralyzed on one side as well, so I still assumed my uncle would recover except for the paralysis. But just a few days later my mom updated me with another phone call – my uncle was barely responding and the prognosis was not good. He died less than a week after the stroke. All very unexpected – in fact, it’s possible he might have survived if he’d not suffered a fall as well as the stroke. He’d been getting out of the car and they aren’t sure exactly when the stroke happened, but it was the fall that caused an extensive amount of bleeding and ultimately brain damage and his death.

This time – I was able to be with my family and grieve with them. Thanks to some help from a friend and luckily affordable plane tickets, I was able to fly out to Oklahoma last week for my uncle’s funeral. I’m so, SO glad I was able to. I had really felt like I’d never been able to completely deal with my cousin’s death, simply because my family and the funeral and most of those grieving it felt so far away. I had no closure. The death of my uncle, had I not been able to attend his funeral and be with my family during it, would’ve been a struggle for me. It would’ve been a struggle to have such a desire to be with them and reconnect with them and not be able to. Losing my cousin and my uncle brought back so many memories for me. They were on the same side of my family, family that I remember spending many holidays and family times with growing up – family that I don’t get the opportunity to see too often, yet still have many fond memories with.

Visiting with my family and attending my uncle’s funeral was EXACTLY what I needed. The few days I spent in Oklahoma with them were very therapeutic. I love my family, and even though I might feel like I don’t relate to them well in a few ways – they are very much still my family. They’re blood – a tie that can’t be broken. You can ditch friends and disown family, but the thing is – those shared memories will always be there. And family is a relationship that goes back generations, so it’s a pretty hard tie to break.

I miss my family. It was good to catch up with them, and even to feel like I was in a place with people that I belong with just by existing. And it was needed for me – being in a place to deal with the feelings of losing someone, a place where the people around you know what you’re feeling… they know what you lost, because they lost it too. My aunt and uncle from Arizona (the parents of my cousin who died) were able to go out to Oklahoma for my uncle’s funeral as well, so it really felt like it was an opportunity for us all to be together, to reconnect and grieve our losses as a family.

At my uncle’s funeral I got to thinking. I couldn’t remember exactly the last time I got to see him or talk to him, but I believe it was probably some time within the last year or two. I don’t know where it was, possibly at my parents’ house. I don’t know what we said or did, but I did think of one thing – I’m sure that when we parted, I gave him a hug, just because I’m used to doing that with family (and a lot of friends) and I almost always do it when leaving someone I don’t get to see often. Then I thought about the fact that I hadn’t known then that would be the last time I’d be able to give him a hug. And that thought was a reminder – of how precious life is, and how we never know when it’s going to end. There is no promise of one more second for any of us, and I think we forget that quite often. I don’t want to get too sappy, but the events of the last few months have taught me – hug your family and friends while you still can, because you never really know if you’re going to see them again.

Let me love like I’ll never see tomorrow
Treat each day as though it’s borrowed
Like it’s precious as a child
Take my hand
Let us reach out to each other
Cause we’re only here for a little while

[These two posts (Part I and II) are dedicated to the memory of Cynthia Marlene Bowman and Clifford James White. You will both always be very much loved and missed by your family.]