11 October 2006

ready for a funeral

when someone dies, some of us decide to go to work the next day, because what else are you going to do. but then people come up and ask you to do shit and you want to scream at them "don't you know someone just died!?" but they don't know, neccessarily. and you realize you shouldn't have come to work, you should've stayed home and continued to stare blankly at the wall trying to remember the last thing you said to your uncle.

you think about the relationship you had. the things that made him him vs. everyone else. his gruff demeanor that scared the shit out of you as a little girl but that you later came to realize was all a big act to hide the fact that he was one of the biggest pushovers on the planet. how he took you out on his harley and told you story upon story of riding all over the country on it. how every time you went on a trip, you got him a t-shirt from the harley store. how he made you a mix cd every time you went to visit. how he made the absolute best turkey stuffing, putting an absurd and glorious amount of butter in. how he listened to a short-wave police radio when he napped. how he was always trying to get you to watch movies you thought sucked. how he loved his dogs and hated his wife's cats (but really he loved them, too). how he helped you buy your first laptop. how he forced you to re-write your resume and buy nice paper to print it on. how, upon seeing you emerge from the pool as a little girl, he said "you're all wet!" and thus a nickname was born. how he brought you a weed magazine back from his recent trip to amsterdam and went through it with you, commenting. how you would go to the gym together and he would explain his entire, intricate workout. his navy tattoos. how he quit smoking after his first heart attack. his siatica. how he bought you your toolkit and tried to talk you into getting a 145-piece socket wrench set that you clearly had no use for. how he would always grill you a steak because you and he were the only ones in the house who could really appreciate it. how he would explain how to grill a steak. how he took you up to his hunting camp and told you the whole story of what is your favorite fireplace. how he died exactly like the violinist on Gray's Anatomy and how weirdly you keep focusing on that because it's the only thing as absurd as the idea that you'll never see him again.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's exactly how I felt when my uncle died.