Say Uncle

I didn’t blog for weeks and even thought once or twice in the last week that maybe I’m done with the blog.  Maybe there’s nothing else to get off of my chest and maybe there are only so many ways I can tell the world that I’m sad.

Instead, I’m on a train to my Mom’s hometown in western Germany as I write this, to attend my uncle’s funeral, so let’s forget any thoughts about me being done with this.

I got the news a week ago.  I don’t want to get into the details of my uncle’s life or death.  There was no scandal.  I didn’t know him terribly well, but am close to his oldest daughter, so it seemed right for me to be at the funeral, especially since I’m the only member of my Mom’s branch of the family who had a chance to be there.  But the thoughts this has broken out in my head … hoo boy.

I’m going to see so many relatives at this funeral I haven’t seen in ages.  My one surviving aunt.  I had 12 aunts and uncles when I was born (though, to be fair, one of my father’s sisters probably died before I was born).  Now I’ve got one aunt left.  There will be cousins and maybe cousins’ children.  I’m told my mother’s cousins will be there and I doubt I’ll even recognize most of them.  I probably last saw them at my great-aunt’s burial.  Her funeral was in 2008, about a week after Emma’s birth.  The last time I talked to Tante Uta, who was almost like an Ersatz Grandma for me since I didn’t really have grandparents growing up, was to tell her that I’d become a father.  It was such a happy call.  And then she died four days later.  And then, eight years later, when the doctor told me my son had a brain tumor, I learned in 2016 that parenthood is a lot more than joy at new babies and frustration with teenagers.  It can take you apart at the cellular level if everything goes wrong.

Tante Uta’s grave is in the same plot where we’ll bury my uncle tomorrow.  So is my other aunt.  And the grandparents I never met.  And I’ll be surrounded by semi-distant family, some of whom probably have no idea I lost a child and several who knew about it all too well, but couldn’t be bothered to drive to Berlin for the funeral.  And yet, here I am, in a westbound train after a frankly long week at work surrounded by Dutch teenagers, heading to my uncle’s funeral.  I’m not going to cause any scenes.  I don’t have the energy for that.  But I wonder why some relatives killed themselves to get to his memorial and some couldn’t be bothered.  Some reached out but did nothing; Others reached out and then didn’t do any of the things they said they would.  I don’t want to dwell on it.  I don’t want to keep mental lists about who did what or not.  But it’s there in the back of my head and it exhausts me.

It wears me out that I seem to think I had some right for people to help me just because my kid was dying.  People are dying in Ukraine every day.  That’s not so far away and I don’t think anyone is obligated to drive out there and help as a private individual.  I knew my uncle was getting older and it’s not as if I carved out time to go for a visit.  I don’t think I’m one to judge.

The problem is that I remember, and that carries its own sense of problems.  I don’t want to make small talk with people whom I think neglected me.  But I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life feeling petty about things that were, frankly, beyond anyone’s control.  An extra visit from a barely known relative wouldn’t have changed the course of things.  Indeed, there was a long stretch there in 2019 when any kind of visit from anyone stressed me out more than I could imagine.

I don’t know.  The memories hurt.  Thinking about what is hurts to.  I have to believe that Colin is still around on some level.  I was on a cruise on the Rhine this week for work and I felt so strongly that he was there with me while I stood away from the crowd at a window, trying to figure out what some wreckage on the shore might have been.  But if he’s around, is he in heaven?  And what would that be like for a 5-year-old without his parents?  Would he even recognize his grandparents?  His Aunt Susan?  His Great Aunt Annelise?  The latest uncle to join him?

If I count correctly, this will be the seventh funeral I’ve ever attended.  That seems so few for someone who’s 51: I seem to always be in Germany when the Americans die and in America when the Germans die.  Then again, since one of those seven was for my kindergarten-aged son, I feel like that one should at least count double.  But I’ve got a lot of relatives aging and there are going to be more funerals.  Some probably did the right thing by us.  Some didn’t.  I don’t know who owed me what, but I probably need to get past this soon.  I’ve got to enjoy the people who are here while they’re here, regardless of what was done or not and what was said or wasn’t.  I need to be more in the present.  That doesn’t mean forgetting Colin or, really, forgetting anything.  It just means I need to be here while I can. 

It’s just so hard so many of the days.  And I want it to stop being this hard.  Probably it’s going to have to be me who figures out how to make it stop being hard.  But I honestly have no idea how to do it other than to keep showing up and trying.  So, I’ll stay on this train with these Dutch kids who seem not to have a care in the world – and I hope they stay that way – and see what awaits me in my Mom’s hometown.