Storied
An uncle of mine, Junior, died about a month ago. He wasn't an uncle with whom I was particularly close --- as a matter of fact, he was the black sheep of my mom's family --- but it still got to me.
I've never really known anyone who has died. Death seems kind of like something that happens in books and movies. Hell, I game so much I half expect people to rez/respawn once they die because I'm more used to that. My mom's dad died when I was less than two years old, so of course I do not remember. (I've often wished he hadn't though, because there's a picture of me on his lap, and he's giving me some beer, and apparently all he wanted was for me to get big enough to chase him around a lot.) In middle school, a girl by the name of Nicole (I think, and I want to say her name was Anastasia, even though I know that is wrong) who rode my bus had some sort of brain tumor and died. Was Acosta her last name? She didn't die on the bus, of course, and I didn't know her that well, so it was just like she stopped showing up one day. She may have even died over the summer, I honestly can't remember. Then there was Ricky Citron, who died while stupidly playing with a gun with some friends. Heidi Struedler, who was the first girl to tell me she liked me way back in 3rd grade, was shot on The Strip in Lafayette when we were in high school; she and her boyfriend were apparently suspected of narcing out some drug dealers or something. Or at least, that's the story.
And that's just it --- those are all stories. I didn't see any of these happenings; I wasn't particularly affected by them at the time; hell, I've never even gone to a funeral and I was raised Catholic. It just doesn't seem real to me. And at the same time it feels like this all-encompassing, pervasive threat that you never know is coming.
I was born on my Junior's birthday, just three decades later. Ever since high school he has been in trouble with the law, starting with drug possession and petty theft, then moving on to writing bad checks and eventually winding up with missing child support payments. My mother had pretty much disowned him some time ago, because she hated the fact that, being a "Junior," any time he was arrested, her classmates thought it was her father in trouble, and she hated that. I only ever met Junior one or two times in my life; the most I had ever heard about him was that he was "on the lam" in New England, and he only came back down south when it was "safe," whatever that means. Again, this is all the story I heard or pieced together or misremembered.
The last time I saw him, he was in town for who-knows-what, and my parents hired him to trim some branches off of the trees in their front yard. That is apparently what he did in Atlanta, where he had somehow ended up residing; he carried around a chainsaw and other equipment and went door-to-door asking for work. I don't remember him saying much. He was dark and wrinkled and he looked dirty, like he could never bathe enough to clear out every crevice in his skin. His hair was stringy and thinning and I remember it swinging back and forth with him as he hung in the tree, the strap taut against his back as he braced himself to cut.
My grandmother could never stay mad at him, though. She loved him as any mother does and she helped support him for years while he was in whatever remote part of the northeast he managed to find himself in. I got the impression that he was in town more than the couple of times I remember seeing him, but of course we weren't brought around for that. When he was in town for the tree-trimming he stayed at Mimi's, and last year, after he was put into a coma and had to recuperate, she took him in again. He had moved down to Atlanta in I-don't-know-when and was then living in a tent on the side of a road and had been hit by a car. I never got many details. I just know that for a good while after that, he was in Mimi's house, recovering. He stayed for a good long while --- over six months I believe --- before going back to Atlanta sometime last year.
He died about a month ago, after being hit by a train. According to a detective with whom my parrain spoke, he was walking on a remote part of the tracks, in an area that was hedged in on both sides so that you couldn't walk anywhere but the tracks, near a bend where the train driver definitely would not have been able to see him on approach and certainly would not have had time to stop once the bend was rounded. He was "pretty messed up," in Mom's words, and so he was cremated. It cost a few hundred dollars to cremate him, and a few hundred more to ship him home (just so much freight), and the last I heard was that they couldn't even have an obituary in the Lafayette paper, because the paper only accepts obituary announcements from funeral homes, not family. I am sure it cost a few hundred more dollars for the simple hole in the ground where he was buried, and probably a few hundred more for the marker, and some money for the priest they got for the sparsely-attended service. Mom described the funeral for me: "[I]t was sad, and awkward, with his kids and ex there- also some other relatives of Susan [his ex]. We really didn’t know them that well- sad commentary on a life." Of course he did not have money, or anything to leave on to his children or ex-wife; all of those expenses were paid by my mom, my uncles, my grandmother. He was so destitute that he could not even get out life without debt.
Hit by a car last year, and survives. Hit by a train this year, and dies. I asked my dad if they thought it might have been suicide and he said, "Well, it makes you wonder..." and that managed to calm me down a little. If he purposefully stood in that train's path, whether out of defiance or despair of life, he made that choice, and he brought his end on. It was not unasked, it did not sneak up, it was not some random occurrence that managed to upset his body's functions beyond repair. It was not any sort thief in the night or a rogue collection of cells festering in him or a vein bursting, without warning, in his brain. He decided it was time and chose to end it, in the story I tell myself.
It helps me sleep at night. The truth is, we'll never really know what happened, and can only make the best guesses we can. I like to think he made that choice because the longer I am away from my family, the more secluded I feel I am becoming with each passing day, and the more I worry that someone I actually do care about will die, and I simply will not know what to do. My grandparents, my siblings, Nikki in Korea in the Army, Jarred in Chicago in the Navy, my parents, my uncles, my friends, E, Dana, myself; we are all weak and vulnerable and amazing biological machines that can stop at any time at the slightest provocation and it scares me to my core. What will happen when it is more than a story? How will I cope? How can I ever stop worrying about it?
I've never really known anyone who has died. Death seems kind of like something that happens in books and movies. Hell, I game so much I half expect people to rez/respawn once they die because I'm more used to that. My mom's dad died when I was less than two years old, so of course I do not remember. (I've often wished he hadn't though, because there's a picture of me on his lap, and he's giving me some beer, and apparently all he wanted was for me to get big enough to chase him around a lot.) In middle school, a girl by the name of Nicole (I think, and I want to say her name was Anastasia, even though I know that is wrong) who rode my bus had some sort of brain tumor and died. Was Acosta her last name? She didn't die on the bus, of course, and I didn't know her that well, so it was just like she stopped showing up one day. She may have even died over the summer, I honestly can't remember. Then there was Ricky Citron, who died while stupidly playing with a gun with some friends. Heidi Struedler, who was the first girl to tell me she liked me way back in 3rd grade, was shot on The Strip in Lafayette when we were in high school; she and her boyfriend were apparently suspected of narcing out some drug dealers or something. Or at least, that's the story.
And that's just it --- those are all stories. I didn't see any of these happenings; I wasn't particularly affected by them at the time; hell, I've never even gone to a funeral and I was raised Catholic. It just doesn't seem real to me. And at the same time it feels like this all-encompassing, pervasive threat that you never know is coming.
I was born on my Junior's birthday, just three decades later. Ever since high school he has been in trouble with the law, starting with drug possession and petty theft, then moving on to writing bad checks and eventually winding up with missing child support payments. My mother had pretty much disowned him some time ago, because she hated the fact that, being a "Junior," any time he was arrested, her classmates thought it was her father in trouble, and she hated that. I only ever met Junior one or two times in my life; the most I had ever heard about him was that he was "on the lam" in New England, and he only came back down south when it was "safe," whatever that means. Again, this is all the story I heard or pieced together or misremembered.
The last time I saw him, he was in town for who-knows-what, and my parents hired him to trim some branches off of the trees in their front yard. That is apparently what he did in Atlanta, where he had somehow ended up residing; he carried around a chainsaw and other equipment and went door-to-door asking for work. I don't remember him saying much. He was dark and wrinkled and he looked dirty, like he could never bathe enough to clear out every crevice in his skin. His hair was stringy and thinning and I remember it swinging back and forth with him as he hung in the tree, the strap taut against his back as he braced himself to cut.
My grandmother could never stay mad at him, though. She loved him as any mother does and she helped support him for years while he was in whatever remote part of the northeast he managed to find himself in. I got the impression that he was in town more than the couple of times I remember seeing him, but of course we weren't brought around for that. When he was in town for the tree-trimming he stayed at Mimi's, and last year, after he was put into a coma and had to recuperate, she took him in again. He had moved down to Atlanta in I-don't-know-when and was then living in a tent on the side of a road and had been hit by a car. I never got many details. I just know that for a good while after that, he was in Mimi's house, recovering. He stayed for a good long while --- over six months I believe --- before going back to Atlanta sometime last year.
He died about a month ago, after being hit by a train. According to a detective with whom my parrain spoke, he was walking on a remote part of the tracks, in an area that was hedged in on both sides so that you couldn't walk anywhere but the tracks, near a bend where the train driver definitely would not have been able to see him on approach and certainly would not have had time to stop once the bend was rounded. He was "pretty messed up," in Mom's words, and so he was cremated. It cost a few hundred dollars to cremate him, and a few hundred more to ship him home (just so much freight), and the last I heard was that they couldn't even have an obituary in the Lafayette paper, because the paper only accepts obituary announcements from funeral homes, not family. I am sure it cost a few hundred more dollars for the simple hole in the ground where he was buried, and probably a few hundred more for the marker, and some money for the priest they got for the sparsely-attended service. Mom described the funeral for me: "[I]t was sad, and awkward, with his kids and ex there- also some other relatives of Susan [his ex]. We really didn’t know them that well- sad commentary on a life." Of course he did not have money, or anything to leave on to his children or ex-wife; all of those expenses were paid by my mom, my uncles, my grandmother. He was so destitute that he could not even get out life without debt.
Hit by a car last year, and survives. Hit by a train this year, and dies. I asked my dad if they thought it might have been suicide and he said, "Well, it makes you wonder..." and that managed to calm me down a little. If he purposefully stood in that train's path, whether out of defiance or despair of life, he made that choice, and he brought his end on. It was not unasked, it did not sneak up, it was not some random occurrence that managed to upset his body's functions beyond repair. It was not any sort thief in the night or a rogue collection of cells festering in him or a vein bursting, without warning, in his brain. He decided it was time and chose to end it, in the story I tell myself.
It helps me sleep at night. The truth is, we'll never really know what happened, and can only make the best guesses we can. I like to think he made that choice because the longer I am away from my family, the more secluded I feel I am becoming with each passing day, and the more I worry that someone I actually do care about will die, and I simply will not know what to do. My grandparents, my siblings, Nikki in Korea in the Army, Jarred in Chicago in the Navy, my parents, my uncles, my friends, E, Dana, myself; we are all weak and vulnerable and amazing biological machines that can stop at any time at the slightest provocation and it scares me to my core. What will happen when it is more than a story? How will I cope? How can I ever stop worrying about it?