mortal

I have some serious and rather sad news to share. I'm feeling a strange kind of sad, just gray really. My uncle Lee, my father's brother, has been suffering from Parkinson's disease for a number of years. I honestly can't even remember at this point, what he was like before the disease. It seems like the healthy uncle Lee has died a long time ago. More recently, the sick uncle Lee has been placed in hospice care and it seems this morning he has taken a turn for the worse.

I talked to my mom just a little bit ago, she said that Lee has taken a turn for the worse. A month or so ago he had wandered out of the house alone and they had to send out a search party for him. He had a feeding tube in his nose because he couldn't eat food any longer because he was aspirating it, causing infection in his lungs. This whole thing is painful to hear about - to hear of anyone suffering such a long, drawn out dying process, but also because my father has had a lot of loss in his life. Growing up, his father left the family and eventually died when my dad was younger, of a heart attack. Losing his older brother was painful and he has also lost some close friends unexpectedly. I remember when we found out an old neighborhood friend, Ray, had died and we had missed the funeral. My dad said to me, "I'm not sure why I keep losing all the men in my life." My heart broke for him.

While I have not been that close with my uncle Lee, it's still a sad time for my family, especially my father. When I think about life and how we all have death in common, I get very somber and introverted. Thinking about my own mortality is humbling. I know we cannot avoid death and I'm okay with that for the most part. When I think about my own death, I like to think of the Mark Twain quote, "I do not fear death, in view of the fact that I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." When I do think about death itself, I think of any pain I might feel, or fear that I might have not lived my life to the fullest or experienced all that I had wanted to before my time, which I think is what most people fear. At almost 27, I've experienced enough to not feel immortal anymore, loved enough to understand real loss but I have not lived enough to be satisfied. My great grandmother died at 90 and my grandma was there to hold her hand and tell her, "It's okay, we'll be okay." My dad's mother passed away in her sleep, knowing that it was her time at almost 93. Lee however, has barely reached his 60s before death has almost come to him. Life definitely isn't fair.

I will say that if anything positive can come from someone dying too young (and I personally think dying before you turn 70 is too young) it can help us each examine our own lives and consider what we haven't done yet. Even if it's something simple, like learning to cook. Or something big like sky-diving or traveling to Europe. I think part of embracing your mortality is being joyful about each day you do have and celebrating as often as possible. Work hard, play hard - that's what my dad has always said. Good advice I think.