The Love I Have

I stood by the graveside, rain was pouring down from the gloomy clouds, making everyone even more somber than they already were.

Me? I was just annoyed we were burying my Uncle Eric.
Again.

This was the 337th time he had died at the age between 30-40 and the 526th time he had died. His highest age of life had been 87, Uncle didn't have the best track record though and had only reached an age even remotely close to 87 twice.

But this time I had high hopes. I helped him stop drinking, got him help for his drug addiction, continued to hang out with him after I turned 33, and had brought him with me everywhere. We were doing well and we were both happy.

Then he had to go and play table tennis by himself. Who knew a ball could break glasses and crush an eye, effectively damaging the brain and making him brain dead.

It would have been okay, as long as he lived to see death naturally it would've been fine for me. But my mother just had to pay attention to her brother this one time and thought it best for him to die. So they pulled the plug and are going to make me go through this another time.

Those selfish, inconsiderate people.

So as I stood there, staring down at my uncle's casket, tuning out the preacher, I thought about what got me into this mess. How a vindictive god had felt that I needed to learn the meaning of helping other people. The being had no idea what it had made me become, had no idea that I just learned to resent my family more and more for not living to see death by old age, even my Uncle Eric.

It was a Saturday, I myself had just died, when my fate had been decided by a God who was in love with the idea of family.

But I also remembered what happened to me and my family, that really got me into this mess.

I had just turned 15 when I went down stairs and found my mother hysterically crying in the living room. She had just been told about the death of her brother, Uncle Eric, and was most likely regretting never spending time with him. He had died of suffocation, having hanged himself on his ceiling fan. His suicide note? It said that he was sorry for being such a burden and couldn't bear being alone.

Her only excuse to him before he died was that she never had time, she was always busy when he came asking to spend time with her and me, his only family after his wife died when they were 20. And when he kept pushing, mother yelled at him that he had no respect for her time, yelled that he should just be happy for her that she was succeeding in life. He never asked to spend time with her again. That was a year ago, mother had only talked to Uncle Eric over the phone after that incident.

When I heard the news of my uncle's death, I felt nothing. I had never known this man, he was a stranger that I just happened to be related to. Of course I did feel sad for the man that I had never known, any death was sad, especially suicide, I felt empathy for my mother, but not much else. And when my mother learned that I had felt nothing for his death, well, she went off on me. Blamed her not seeing him on me, saying that if I had not taken up so much of her time than she would have been there for her brother.

After that day, I pulled away from my mother liked she did to her brother. When mother came to me apologizing for her words a year later, I was walking out of her home, bags in hand, taxi waiting outside. I had just turned 16 then so I was going to stay with my father for another two years before moving out. My mother begged and pleaded for me to stay with her, but when I said that I couldn't take her silent guilt and accusations, she turned cold on me and played the victim.

Before my death - one caused by old age, rest assured - I never talked to my mother. Even when she kept trying to talk to me, bringing father in our problems, I never talked to either of them. She had also accused me, saying that I was the one who was overreacting, my father backing her up.