Reality has a way of popping up on you when you least expect it. Time flies and all that.
I suppose that God also has a funny way of sending messages. After I woke up to the sound of an evangelical preacher this morning, I was checking the alarm clock setting since I needed to be up and over to my house this morning to meet up with the people who were fixing my hot water heater, when a phone call came.
My uncle Donald had went to the hospital yesterday from the nursing home. He has been wheelchair bound for years with MS. He has had three infections over the last year.
This last one he couldn't fight off.
The doctor called this morning and said that he has "hours" to live. So, I am on the way to the hospital with my mom. The doctor is asking if we have a DNR.
I'm not really sure what to say at this point except that I had just begun getting him to tell me stories about when he was in Germany as part of the occupying force and when he was in Korea, what it was like to grow up during WWII.
The type of things that you never think to ask people until you realize that they're older and very sick. When you realize, once again, that you haven't spent nearly as much time with them as you wanted to or that you thought you had.
Regrets are terrible things to have.
No time to cry though. My mom's going to be a wreck since it's her only brother and only member of her immediately family that was left.
I remember how many times I thought he was an old curmudgeon pain in the ass.
I guess you can love old curmudgeon's too, even when they are pains in your ass.
I'm gonna miss that guy.
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