Tonight, On a Very Special Falling...

If any of you have been kind enough to stick around while I went through yet another lapse in posting, you are not about to be rewarded. I'm gonna get a little maudlin, a little navel-gazey, and not at all relevant to anyone not related to me.

Can't say I didn't warn you.

My uncle died on Wednesday night. Technically, he's my half-uncle, but we always called him Uncle Paul. He was my mom's half-brother, from my grandfather's first marriage (well, we found out after my grandfather's death that it was actually his second marriage, meaning my grandmother was actually his third wife, but that's another story...). Grandpa was twenty years older than Grandma when they met (um, and for the rest of their lives, I guess), which caused quite the scandal back in 1940-something. They met--and isn't this the perfect sepia-toned old-timey movie meet cute?--at a dance hall where my grandpa was playing with the band. Grandma fell in love, and faced her parents with a much older suitor who also happened to have an ex-wife and a son. Now, in 2010, I don't know many parents who would be thrilled to have their 19-year-old daughter bring home a 39-year-old man with an ex and a kid. In 1940mumble (note to self--check actual date)? That took guts.

When my mom told me this story, I was kind of stunned, because I'd never thought of either of my grandparents as particularly trouble-making, tradition-breaking types. They were grandparents, you know? Grandpa played organ and banjo, and Grandma made little crocheted reindeer placeholders where you could squeeze the jaw and find the hidden Hershey's kiss inside. Hardly Sid and Nancy. I knew about the age difference, but in my selfish young adult way, hadn't thought about what that must have looked like when they met. After all, sixty and eighty look very similar to 18-year-old eyes.

Anyway, growing up, my mom knew she had a half-brother, but they hardly ever saw each other, for reasons I'm not totally clear on. My sister might know, as she took a trip with my mom and aunt where they reminisced about all matter of family gossip while she "stayed very still in the corner, eavesdropping, and hoping they wouldn't remember I was there." But as adults, mom and Paul sought each other out and became very close. He had kids from his first marriage, and we got to see them a few time while growing up. Amy was a couple years older than me, and for a while we were pen pals. As teenagers, we flew out for her wedding, a few years after her brother Andy's. I thought they were both glamorous, tall and good-looking and tan. They lived in California, after all. They had limes growing in their backyard. They were a world apart from the pasty pre-teens like myself that I hung out with in the midwestern suburbs.

When my mom was getting progressively grimmer diagnoses, Uncle Paul would send e-mails to her with links to various studies or centers that were trying new cancer protocols. One visit home, she tasked me with going through these links and seeing if there was anything we hadn't already tried or discussed with the doctors, because it had gotten to the point where she was too exhausted to do the research. And too tired of being disappointed. But she didn't want to hurt her brother's feelings by not responding to his hard work. And I don't think it even occurred to her to try to tell him, "Enough."

Mom visited Paul right before things went really south health-wise, about six months before she died. The plan was for him to then come out and visit her. She died the week before his travel date. He couldn't get the flights switched in time to come out for her funeral, but Amy came out, an unexpected gesture which meant the world to me. Paul came out as scheduled, the following weekend, and was there for the internment of the ashes. I could certainly understand his need to participate in some sort of grieving ceremony, but at the time I was beyond devastated myself, plus I was horribly ill, so the whole time I mostly wanted to lay down and not speak to anyone. I remember being so sick, and so ashamed of myself that I couldn't seem to manage to be the picture of hospitality and grace that my mom would have. I mean, there was dad, my aunt, and Uncle Paul, at least managing to make conversation, and I was just trying to keep my head up, literally and figuratively. I felt awful for Paul, who was so sad and so disappointed that he hadn't gotten to see "Sis" one last time, but I also was so overflowing with my own grief that I was still mostly numb.

About six months after mom died, MOTH and I had purchased this, our first home, and were nowhere near unpacked when Paul e-mailed me to say that he and his wife and MIL would be driving through Portland and could they take us out for dinner? They graciously ignored the crazy status of the house, the way that, with five people, one person always had to be standing. They took us out for an amazing meal, and if I had to have a Last Time I Ever Saw Paul, I couldn't complain about that evening.

A few weeks ago, Andy e-mailed us with news that Paul was in the hospital. They weren't sure what was wrong. It looked like the swine flu, but all the tests came back negative. They still don't know what happened, but decreased lung function turned into a ventilator which became kidney shut-down and flatlining and resuscitating ...the last e-mail from Andy said that all Paul's vitals were stable, and that no news was probably good news. I cried when I opened it, because I had just gotten off the phone with Amy, who told me that he had died.

I hated getting that phone call. For myself, I am sad that Paul died, because he was family. But I wasn't particularly close to him, mostly due to basic geography. But for his kids and grandkids? For his wife? For them, I am heartbroken.

What's weird? Is that I keep getting sad for Mom. Like, I find myself thinking about how devastated she'd be if she were alive. And then thinking about how devastate Paul was when she died. And back and forth. The hell, brain? Why would you keep coming back to this weird, depressing, and stupidly illogical morbid Mobius strip?

In other moments, I am able to find some peace in the overly simplistic, very Christian idea of "they're together now." I do believe in God, and I do believe in an afterlife of some sort, although my thoughts about both are found in no bible or church that I know of. I don't really think of this whole other plane where Mom has been waiting, reclining in her resplendent white gown for Paul to check in at some ethereal front desk so that she can show him around. I don't know how it works, but I'm pretty sure that's not it. (First of all, in Mom's heaven, I think she'd get to wear sweatpants, and there'd be no lying around, unless there was also a stack of trashy novels beside you.) I dunno. I guess I like the idea of Mom having someone around, though.

Amy told me that, as they held Paul's hands when the doctors unplugged the vent, they told him, "Sis is waiting for you." I like the thought that this brought some small measure of comfort to someone in that room. That's what Mom would have wanted.