Uncle Jim Died

[nancytngirl]

Well, I got the word a little while ago that my Uncle Jim died today. It was a long drawn out illness, bad heart, bad lungs, years of smoking and heavy drinking did him in. He was in his 80's. Aunt Ruth is doing OK. Not sure when the funeral is yet. Jim was a very difficult man for my aunt to live with. On top of his substance abuses, he was

Comments

[nancytngirl]

Thank you for your reply. My aunt and uncles marriage was a strange one. Uncle Jim was always the way he was all through life. It wasn't just his older years that made him that way. I can remember countless times Ruth would run away from home to escape him, sometimes to our house (when I was younger and still lived at home.) Ruth had a very deeply religious need to stay married in the eyes of God, you know what I mean. Ruth always had a way of telling stories of her years with Jim.. she was a great story teller and it was entertaining to hear the very weird things Uncle Jim tried to pull on her. Her favorite story: Jim got drunk and tried to sell the house.. and the realtor came over and talked to him first because he was inside and answered the door. Aunt Ruth was in the back tending to the garden. The realtor goes up to her. She says, "You can sell the house if you want to but my half's not for sale." The realtor quickly goes back to Jim. Jim tells Ruth sometime after the incident. "Man, what a crazy real estate agent. All he wanted to do was talk me out of the sale. He'll never get any business that way!" Aunt Ruth would always chuckle after she told that one. "My half's not for sale! haha!"

His need to hold onto everything and not throw anything away.. this has also been going on 50+ years.. so.. there is a lot to sort through!! I'm hoping to go over and help her out in the near future. I love my Aunt Ruth, she is one of my favorite aunts. She's unusually full of energy and life for her age. The type of person who loves to get out and run around, loves people, loves church. Very fun person to be around. I'd love it if she would move closer to the rest of the family. She lives a couple cities away, while most of the family lives in the city I do.

She's dealing with the death well. I've talked to her on the phone and she seems to be doing well.

I didn't mean to write so much to your comment. I guess looking back over the years, I have a lot of unusual and funny moments to remember.

[shamanist]

I am glad to hear that your aunt and yourself are doing OK.
You can write as much as you feel, thanks for sharing your stories and your aunt's ones. We all grow from life experience, either from our own life or from the stories of others. I have lost an aunt and an uncle some 20 years ago and I never knew them enough, I feel. They were most of the time living quite far from us, and it took me sometime to realize how, if they had lived closer, I could have known them much better for the best. Distances have been the main factor. Even today brothers and sisters we are all scattered around the globe. And I had an uncle which I never knew, he died in an earthquake about a year before I was born, he was about 30 then. If he hadn't died I would have not been born or I would have been born a year before... not sure how to view it. But my mother was pregnant when she got the bad news about her brother and because of the shock she had a miss-carriage. Then she was pregnant again and had me. So I am not sure how to interpret that. That uncle was the youngest brother of my mother and he loved her very much. A couple of year before he died, my mother left the city and country where her family lived, to live with my father. When she came to her brother to say good bye, the hugged her and cried and he told her "I know that I will never see you again". How did he know that he would not? He was the only one who told her that when she left. And he died two years later in that earthquake. A month or so before the arthquake he moved to a different house. If he hadn't moved, he would not have died. The night of the earthquake he spoke on the balcony with his neighbour, then before midnight he went to sleep. His neighbout survived, and if he had kept on talking with him for another half an hour he would have survive too apparently. It was all as if it was planned, as part of a divine scheme. A divine scheme which he knew about in some manner or another. This is one of the most misterious, tragic but fascinating story about this uncle. At time I think that maybe I am his re-incarnation... because of the coinscidence of events as related to my birth. He always wanted to protect my mother, even from my father. He told her that he would even come and take the plane to help her if my father gives her problems. My father left a month after I was born, but my uncle was not there anymore to come and help her, and he would have done it. So, maybe he re-incarnated into me to be close to her and help her as he said..? I am not sure why I always come up with that interpretation in my mind when I think about the earthquake, my uncle and my mother. It is just adding another mystical step to the already mystical story of my uncle and his sudden death.

Wow, I wrote so much too, got carried away,... by my feelings.
I wish you the best!