My uncle

Last week an uncle of mine died. I had not spoken to him in 5 years, since we had a fall out regarding inheritance questions, like many families experience. In the fall, when his bad health was taking a turn to even worse, my mother decided to let bygones be bygones and visited with him. Even though the things of the past were not resolved, it is important she got to see him, as they were very close as children. My mother was just 1.5 years older and felt as his protector. She is holding his hand in the picture below.

My memories of him hark back to my own childhood. He lived with his family upstairs in the house of my grandmother, where I spent a lot of time and consequently upstairs with my cousins. He worked at the local bank, where I sometimes went to visit him and he would take me downstairs and hand me a coke. remember the small greenish glass bottles with the real taste of coke before recipe changes and corn syrup? I liked visiting at the bank, he always had freebies like fantastic ball point pens and all this materials for house and interior design. His workday was like clock work, coming and going precisely and I remember the sound of his steps on the stairs, because his prosthetic leg made a certain noise.

He was not a man of many words, when I would come and visit after having been away at school for a while or maybe a year out of the country, he would mutter something like "ah, back in the area" and that would be it and it would be enough.

My uncle has been quite sick and in and out of the hospital for a while. Strangely, he died on my aunts 60th birthday, as if he decided it was time to go, time for her to care for herself and not him, which she has done for so long. Sometimes it just is time for people to go, knowing it does not make it less sad, but easier to accept. I do not know if I ever would have seen him again anyway, but even so, his death is bringing back little memories of my childhood and reminds me of the deaths of my other uncles and so I do feel some kind of melancholy and sadness. And in a weird way I am sad about having a family in which members are not really emotionally close, where love, loyalty and selflessness are not daily occurences.