Reading harold_maude's journal

I got a phone call last night that one of my uncles died.
It was a strange thing. One more in several years of loosing relatives.
It's going on 10 years now that people who I'm related to have been dying.
It's strange because it's gotten to the point where my new years hope is that this will be a year free of loosing someone that I'm related to.
But each year it happens.

Some have been harder than others. But each has left me thinking about things. And this one is no exception. Time is moving forward and stops for each person when the last page is turned.
We remember and pull the memories from the shelves of our minds and dust off the cobwebs that have settled there and reflect.

But it reminds me that it's important to be real with the people in our lives. To cut through the bullshit because if bullshit is all you share with a person and never get down to where the conversations count, where you actually get to share in the things that matter, when death comes you find that you wish you had.

I've tried to live my life for a long time in the real, instead of living in bullshit.
There is a difference. My uncle was crabby most of his life, but he was honest about how he felt about things, and made no bones about telling anyone what he thought.
I think like alot of people of the generation before mine the deep real things were kept somewhere deep inside.
The things that make your heart go bump in the middle of the day.
And all the dreams you never share with anyone. And like many people of that generation the dreams were different than what dreams are now...
maybe I'm wrong about that. I don't know. But if they were dreamers alot of them never said anything, at least not to the ones comming after them, their children.

I've got lots and lots of memories of this man, and back when I was little and the world looked so huge, like most adults in my life, he was this larger than life person who was bigger than me and there was no point in arguing anything. It would have been disrespectful of me to argue.

Now, here it is years later and the only thing I would like right now is to be able to make it to the funreal. But it's now possilbe.
So I will deal with my memories like everyone else who won't make it. And for months, think about all the people I can't go see and share lunch with, or talk about what ever comes to mind with.
There is just silence now.
All of this seems so unreal. So undone. So like when my father died.
And how weird I felt after.

Where ever he is I hope he's happy now. And at peace inside.
And if he had to fight anything inside, it's all done now.

I will be there at the funreal, even if it is only in my thoughts and prayers. That will have to be enough.
At least for now.

It only looks that way because your standing on your head.