| At about noon on Christmas day my dad recieved a phonecall from a relative letting us know that my great-uncle Bob had passed away about an hour earlier from a stroke. He was 89 years old and one of my favorite people, my late grandmother's brother, and after my last grandparents died he and his wife, my great-aunt Beth adopted my siblings and I as their grandchildren. I keep remembering the countless hours I spent at their house playing cards and eating dinner while visiting with friends and family, hearing tales of when he was younger, spending the night at their house when my mother gave a kidney to her sister, picking sweetcorn from one of their fields that was once an Indian village on a hot August afternoon, there are so many memories. Yes, people grow old, yes, I will see Uncle Bob in heaven which is a better place for us all, but I mourn the loss of a great man who I shall not see again this side of the grave. There are so many people like this that I really miss. People that I cared for, people who cared for me, people who were connections to my past and the past of my family, people who knew what my father was like as a child (after I was born my mother was stopped in a grocery store by an elderly lady why said that I must be Terry Ellis' son because I looked exactly like my dad did as a child), what my grandfather was like at my age (apparently I am a lot like him in many ways even if he was born in 1917 and I in 1983). I feel like these ties to the past are being irevocabily severed, ties to history and ties to my childhood as people who truly shaped who and what I am today are gone. This is the third Christmas in a row when someone close to my family has died between December 23rd and 26th. I do not mean to complain, Christmas day was very good with much to be thankful for, friends, family, health, and, above all things, salvation. |
