I was planning to sit down and write my traditional new year's reading wrap up and resolutions post this afternoon, but instead I'm going to share some memories of my uncle who just passed away very unexpectedly. He had a massive heart attack while riding the exercise bike at his apartment complex. The ladies in the office went in to check on him, and he was already gone.
The irony of this is that my aunt, his wife, had just started hospice care. For three years, she had been fighting cancer that began in her lungs, metastasized to her brain, and the moved to her skull. The tumor on her skull was only found recently but was already stage four, so although she fought back from lung cancer and then seemed to be recovering, or at least living stably with the brain cancer for a year or so, over the past couple of months, she rapidly declined, and there were no more treatments left for this last type of cancer. As I write, she had not been told yet that her husband died, as this just happened. By the time I share this, who knows what will happen. Her days were already limited; now that she has lost her husband of almost fifty years, who was her primary caregiver, she may have even fewer days.
*** Edited to add - I started writing this Saturday late afternoon. On Sunday evening, my aunt also passed away, quietly. Her two children, 3 granddaughters, two remaining siblings, and her siblings-in-law, including my mom, were all at her apartment throughout the day, but as these things often happened, they had all just stepped into other rooms - my cousin to get her girls ready for bed in the other room, the others for a bite to eat or to make a phone call - when she faded away. She survived my uncle by about 36 hours. Her death was a mercy after a long struggle - now to join her husband.***
My uncle is my mom's older brother. They are about two years apart. They have a younger brother who is about seven years younger than my mom because my grandmother had secondary infertility and my grandfather had polio in those years. So my mom and uncle were close in age, but according to their stories, they were antagonists for most of their childhood - it sounds like he was a big tease, and my mom may have pushed his buttons in return. Their dad was a Disciples of Christ minister and my grandmother was the quintessential preacher's wife, a gracious hostess, lovely and kind. So, of course, the kids may have fit the stereotype of naughty preacher's kids in their youth, and in high school they fit other stereotypes: my uncle playing the role of golden boy, star football player and high achiever, and my mom the cheerleader and social butterfly.
Despite the arguments and name calling they mythologized for us (Laurie Leadbottom being a classic name for my mom), they became very close as adults. Part of the growth of this relationship may be attributable to my grandmother's Christmas Eve traditions, and perhaps some to the memories formed while growing up moving around as my grandfather was called to different churches, - or maybe because my mom found in my aunt the sister she always wanted. They and my other aunt loved each other greatly. My uncle met my aunt after he went to college to play football in Oklahoma and then got a high school football coaching job in Fort Worth, where my mom's family had once lived, but by that time they were settled in Indianapolis, where my grandfather worked for the Disciples Church headquarters. My aunt was a high school English teacher who loved her subject and her students. She introduced me to Jane Austen and the beauties of Masterpiece Theater literary adaptations.
Every summer and every Christmas, their family drove from Texas to Indiana for a week's vacation and reconnection with family, until about five years ago, when he and my aunt moved up from Texas to help their daughter take care of her three little girls after her husband left.
That action tells you something about the importance of family to my uncle, but his entire life was a testament to the love he had for his family, including his nieces and nephews. Although he had a busy career as a high school football coach and then a second career as a missionary coach for Christian Sports Outreach International, twice every year, their family would drive the 15 hours from Fort Worth to Indianapolis to spend a week with the extended family. And every visit he would take the nieces and nephews out to a movie and a treat. My earliest memories are of going to Roslyn Bakery in Indy for their famous big yellow smiley face cookies (the original emojis - they might not have gone out of business if they could have latched onto that marketing scheme). Some years it was Steak and Shake or Dairy Queen. There were six of us for a long time and then four more younger cousins came along around the time my brother born and my younger uncle finally got married and had kids (I was their flower girl, and my first babysitting gigs were for them). We would all cram into my grandfather's long station wagon, a couple lucky ones getting to sit in the rear facing pop up seats in the trunk. Some years my uncle took the cousins in two groups - the older ones and then the younger ones because we older ones would want to see movies like The Goonies that had inappropriate parts. Those trips were pretty much the only time we went to the movies except for occasional drive ins during the summers at the lake, until I was in high school and could pay my own way.
The Christmas trips were marked by additional traditions. Christmas Eve was reserved for celebrating with my mom's side of the family. The Texas and Indiana cousins all met at my grandparents' house for a big dinner followed by a talent show of sorts where grandkids played a carol on an instrument they were learning or sang one with my grandmother accompanying them on the piano. Then my aunt would recite Luke 2, the Christmas story, by memory, and the aunts and my grandmother would tear up. Only after the Christmas message was proclaimed were we allowed to open gifts, one at a time, from youngest to oldest. In those days, the aunts bought small gifts for all the cousins, and my grandmother would have 3 gifts for all the grandkids. Although most years, these gifts were tokens of love, not large gifts, when we cousins were teenagers, my uncle surprised everyone by secretly shopping at the cool stores - the Gap, Forenza or The Finish Line - and wrapping gifts from "Son of Santa" that delighted us - T-shirts or sweatshirts that were in style brand names, what teenagers wanted, not the usual grandma clothes. Again, as an adult, I see the love in this more clearly. He let my aunt buy us our little gift, and then he splurged on his coach's salary for an additional treat, and kept the magic of Christmas alive for the teens, who were reluctantly still listening to scratchy violin solos by the younger cousins on Christmas eve.
Those gatherings haven't happened in years. In the early years of our marriage, my husband and I would alternate spending Christmas with either my family or his family, so we kept participating in the Christmas eve gift exchange while the younger cousins were teens and my grandparents were still living. One of the last Christmas eve gatherings was around my grandfather's hospice bed. We all sang the carols around his bedside and my aunt tremulously recited the Nativity story. We took turns saying something to him as he lay locked in paralysis from Parkinson's disease. The next morning, back at my mom and dad's, as our kids were opening their Santa gifts, my mom got a call that he had passed away early that morning - gone to celebrate Jesus's birthday in Heaven as she told our young children.
But when all of the cousins reached college and young adulthood and were getting married, that tradition slowly faded. There were a few years when our parents tried to gather us on an evening other than Christmas Eve, but the last year we went back Christmas was before we moved to Guam in 2011.
Nonetheless, we still gathered with the cousins when we could. When our youngest was born, my aunt and uncle drove up from Ft Worth to Oklahoma City to meet her for a few hours - a six hour round trip drive for lunch at Sonic and some baby squeezes. They were almost as close as a third set of grandparents to my older kids. I will always be grateful to them for welcoming me and our two oldest, who were 1 and 2 at the time, to live with them in their little 3 bedroom house while I finished my last semester of grad school. Dan was deployed that winter, so I moved from Virginia back to Texas with the little boys for a semester. I remember trying to write papers on an old desktop computer in their back bedroom after putting the boys to bed, where I could also crank out a couple emails that the ship would get when they pulled into a port. A couple students watched them on campus during my daytime classes, but I had a once a week night class, when my aunt would feed them and put them to bed after a long day of teaching high schoolers. On weekends we'd watch Masterpiece together or Rom coms. My uncle would chase the boys around the back yard and take them for rides in his classic convertible. Those days are like a long ago dream now, but I am still inspired by their willingness to take us in. That I was bold enough to ask them to is proof that I trusted in their generosity.
Now they are gone, together. Their fiftieth wedding anniversary was approaching. Although Uncle Trent had had heart trouble in middle age, and had a triple bypass surgery at some point, he was still in pretty good shape, so his death was a surprise. He had been giving his all to caring for my aunt, while also still helping my cousin with her kids. He picked them up from school and helped get them settled back at whom while their mom finished her nursing shift. Then he would take care of my aunt, and continue to go back to Texas regularly to take care of his house and business there, and to spend time with their son, who was living in their house. They were planning to go back to Texas soon, since their granddaughters were now all in school and my cousin's hours were more regular. What a gift that they made that difficult decision to root up their lives so that they could care for their granddaughters and daughter and have those few years together.
The last time I saw them was this past summer. We sat on the porch at my sister's house and told stories and laughed. My aunt seemed to be regaining strength at that time. We thought we might see them at Thanksgiving, but they had made the trek to Texas to see their friends and family there. And maybe that trip took too much out of them. Or maybe that trip was a blessing that squeezed more love into the world before they left.
I'll be heading up to Indiana for the memorial service this weekend with our youngest, and then we'll all go to the service in Ft Worth when that takes place. Their lives are an inspiration to spend our time and money on connections, on loving others - which may be my resolution this year. Just go.
