A Rough Week

Last Sunday morning the phone rang. My phone rarely rings at 8:30 am since everyone in my world knows that at that time I'm either gone, getting ready to go, or asleep. It was my sister, calling to tell me that my Uncle John  (my mum's brother) had been found dead the night before. He was at home, he lives alone, he's retired, and the neighbours had not seen him for a few days and called the police. He was wearing his jacked and the dog had his collar on and they were by the door. They figured that he had been dead for 2-4 days before he was found and the autopsy showed that it was a heart attack.

Most of this came out over the course of the week. All we knew last Sunday is that he was dead, and had been dead for some days before he was found. That's all I knew as I left for church and tried to push it out of my mind so I could concentrate on my Sunday School class and then the babies in Junior Church. It would come back to strike me at odd moments during the morning and I would push it away until I could think about it.

My uncle and I were not terribly close, although we loved each other. He lived in Ottawa and we exchanged the occasional email (he would send pictures of the dog) and we'd have dinner together whenever he was in town. I wish now that I'd made more effort to stay in touch; I'm thinking about visiting my mum's other brother and his family sooner rather than later (I've been planning to visit "some time" for a long time now). I miss my uncle even though I hadn't seen him for several years now and it feels strange to miss someone I would otherwise only think about occasionally. It's strange, those family ties, and how they can fray without breaking and how much it hurts when they do break.

And added to that is knowing that he died alone and wasn't found right away. I live alone and I will tell you the truth: I've always wondered what will happen if I die, how long it will take for people to notice, if I will die alone. It's the one part of living alone that I really, really hate. And I know, logically, that between work and church and other stuff, someone will notice that I'm not around. I also know that when I'm dead, I will be with God and it won't matter to me if no one finds my body.

So it's been an emotional week.