Uncle Harry and Sunsets

I'm late in posting, as well . . . I've got a handful of things to blather about.  Like the ending of summer, which turned (as usual) into an Indian Summer, the settling of fall, my beignot skirt that I've only worn once on account of that Indian Summer, another pencil, the new jeans I made, and other items.  Yet, work and life played games with me this past week, and then yesterday there was a passing.  Uncle Harry, technically a cousin, passed expectantly.  Yet, a passing is still a passing.  Grief and loss still creep up and embrace you like an unwanted in a snow storm who drinks your last beer and hogs the fire warmth.  In a day or so I'll release the post I had ready.  Right now . . . it just doesn't seem fitting.  

So instead of talking about how layers of fabric hide the curves of my ass that shouldn't be there, I'm wrapped in a series of emotions.  Many of those emotions I am not entirely comfortable with them lurking around.  This past summer my Dad and I took a rode trip out to Indiana to see Uncle Harry one last time, as we  knew in August he had just a few months left with the cancer.  

The Indiana Windmill farm, by Indy.  

Indiana, a state I once called home . . . long, long ago.  So much corn.  

Uncle Harry, or Harry the Horn as most knew him, was many things.  Story says he went to work for Lever Brothers to make a steady income for his family.  Him, his wife, and two daughters lived within walking distance of the plant (in Whiting, IN) for more than a decade.  All of us know the smell of Whisk laundry soap being made: a smell we will not soon forget.  Most of my memories of him and his family are there, in what is now the "old house."  He was always the comedian and life of the party.  The summer he put in an above ground pool, in the back yard, he tore up his finger.  After a trip to the ER he sported his finger with pride chanting, "I'm number one." That, in many ways, was how he lived.  

Most of my memories are private because even though I run this blog I do still have deep grains of intimacy with my own life.  Of course, this side of the family comes with a load of mixed emotions for me.  I have been ostracized, lie to, lied about, and my personal favorite is that someone says I don't have Lupus.  One statement: I have fucking Lupus, and if you don't believe me live in my body for one day.  Like today, with the rash on my arms, the swollen joints, and the sour stomach.  Better yet, look at my medical history from the hospitalizations, surgeries, and drugs.  

Going back this summer brought a lot of these memories to the surface, things I thought I'd dealt with years ago.  Hearing my father's sister's voice via the phone, twice, made my blood curdle.  My father doesn't talk to her, and in short . . . I do not have a single kind memory of that women.  Not one.  Every single time I have tried to be around her, have a relationship, etc. she turns so horribly evil on me.  There's obviously more to that, and . . . 

In short, saying goodbye to Uncle Harry was also my goodbye to Indiana and all that goes along with it.  

I am sad to see Uncle Harry go, though he is out of pain now.  His three grandchildren won't grow up with him telling them the frog prince heritage of the family tree, won't wake up to him playing his horn, and they won't sit on the back stoop and drink a beer and smoke a cig with him.  In all reality, that last one is probably for the better.  

On that note, as I close the bad memories and focus on the humorous ones I have with Uncle Harry, here's a sliver of pictures along the way.  

Uncle Harry wanted to sit and talk with me, he got out of bed for it.  Asked about my putting away for retirement and asked if I still have sex with my husband even though we don't want kids.  Yup.  He was like that.  In life, even before death began to chase him.  

He wanted to come outside with us and drink his beer.  Becks was in that solo cup.  We we walked into the house, he was excited to see me.  Then, then, he looked at my Dad and said: "Man, you're fat." Dad, holding his belly, smiled and "Yea, this is good eatin." Harry pointed to his fragile body, hospital bed, and machines in the room: "This is good livin', Man."

He had plans to get a haircut the next day.  His brother was going to drive him, and he said that he really wanted to drive . . . "It will be dead man driving, Man." 

Uncle Harry to the end.

Uncle Harry in the middle, my Dad in green, and Uncle Don (Harry's brother, who came in to help him with his bucket list until the end).  Dad never smiles . . . When they posed for this photo my Dad and Uncle Don groaned.  Uncle Harry: "Ha ha ha.  Look at you two! Dying gets me the best seat in the house!"

Him and me the day after I graduate college.  We drove up from KWC to Indiana.  We both smoked back them .  . . 

A memory I don't have a photo of, and wish I did, Uncle Harry and his girls with me at a Wrigley Field.  The Cubbies lost, but it was a good day.  

With that from a status I uploaded yesterday.  It's funny how when people pass we see visions of our lives, their and of moments past.  The work we do fades to the wayside, to become a burden of desire as we try to avoid the folds of memory and blanket of reality.  Uncle Harry passed, which means he left the pain of cancer   Though, like others left behind, I;m struggling with wrapping my mind on the here and now.  Struggling to write a lecture, and starring at ungraded work . . . it all seems trivial yet meaningful   In the truth of it, these are the continual stories of our lives providing a series of sunsets along the way.