Farewell to Uncle J

You know how when things are really bad, and you think, ok this sucks, but at least things can’t get worse. Which is of course a total crock. They can get so much get worse. And they will. Things are pretty bad around here. I’ve been sick, I haven’t been sleeping well, and I’m swamped and totally stressed out at work, as I try to arrange things so that someone can cover for me during my potential five weeks of jury duty, all the while knowing that I’ll still have to work several hours a day in addition to spending a full day at the trial. This begs the question of when I am going to be able to do everything else I need to do, like eat, work out, and sleep. Of course, if I don’t have time to eat, maybe I can just skip the working out part. I’m still hoping to find a way to work sleep in.

Wednesday night, I was home alone and I found out that my uncle J (who is actually really my first cousin once removed, but I’ve always sort of thought of him as my uncle) had died on Tuesday night. I found out via answering machine, and it was a big shock. Although I had heard that he was in the hospital, I didn’t think that much of it since he had been having a lot of non-life-threatening health problems for the last year or two. And now he’s dead. It hit me really hard, and I sobbed for about 20 minutes. Then I crawled into bed.

I woke up at 4:30 a.m. with a migraine. I stumbled out of bed and made myself a cup of tea (caffeine sometimes helps mitigate the pain), took an advil, and went back to bed. I lay there awake and feeling like someone was continuously dropping an anvil on my head until the alarm went off. I forced myself to get up, because I’ve been out of work a lot this winter for health reasons, and I am just too backed up to take anymore time off, even I though I felt like shit and was operating on about 5 hours sleep.

Getting ready for work was a really fun, and involved a lot of stumbling into walls and dropping of things. Putting on makeup did nothing, because it couldn’t cover up the swollen-from-crying eyes and there’s not enough concealer in the world to hide the dark circles under my eyes.

For my ongoing sinus problems, I got some new prescription meds that I have to take in the morning and the evening. I picked up the bottle to take the morning pill with my breakfast. I read the fine print and realized that you have to take this pill on an empty stomach, either one hour before a meal or two to three hours after. Which is going to make these pills really hard for me to take. Even with my morbid fear of getting pregnant, I have trouble remembering to take birth control pills, so I keep them on the dining room table so I see them every morning when I’m eating. Otherwise, it would be really hit or miss. I can’t take these new pills before I eat because I am not up an hour before I eat. And taking them two to three hours after is going to be a serious problem for me to remember. I dropped one of the pills on the floor and I got down on my hands and knees to find it, because they cost a fucking fortune. When I was down there, I considered just curling up in the fetal position and calling it a day.

And then the toilet broke. It just stopped flushing. With, ummh, stuff in the bowl. So, I had to stick my hand in there several times to try to fix things. (Memo to self: buy a plunger.) One of the things about having a migraine is that you feel really nauseous and sometimes you have to throw up. And having to stick my hand into an unflushed toilet really, really made me want to vomit. Of course, I had to try really hard not to vomit, since I wouldn’t be able to flush the fucking toilet. While I was sticking my hand into the toilet (shudder), I noticed that it was pretty filthy and I was disgusted by that, but not so disgusted that I could actually bring myself to clean it. Hopefully, the maintenance guy will associate the filth with the backed-up toilet and not with our general level of cleanliness.

And the whole time that I was moping around the house, whining to myself, I felt really selfish and shitty and awful, because J is dead and I’m this stupid idiot who’s moaning about her broken toilet. J was an amazing person, and the whole thing is really hard for me because he’s from the part of my family that lives in another country and so they’re far away and I can’t do anything, like go to the funeral or send flowers or anything (the funeral was yesterday). I feel really disconnected from this part of my family. I haven’t seen them in years, and now I’m wishing I had gone there on my honeymoon, so Lord Kissington could have had the chance to meet J and the other people who are important to me. During my childhood, I spent my summers in that country, and J was always incredibly kind to me. When I got older, J, who didn’t drink, would always go out and buy a bottle of something special for me to drink whenever I was visiting. It was usually some sort of god-awful sherry that he thought was appropriate for “young ladies” to drink, but I always choked it down because he had made such an effort.

Now that J is gone, I’ve lost another link to my childhood. I never thought of J as old, but I realize yesterday that he was in his early 70s, which really shocked me. I guess I had him frozen in time at a much younger age. And both of my parents are turning 60 this week. Which means that I’m getting older every minute, and my childhood is receding farther and farther into the mists of memory. Some things are still very clear to me, but other stuff is starting to get fuzzy, and I wonder about the point at which it all starts to blur together. I really don’t want to forget.

So, in memory of Uncle J, I’ll be pouring out a bottle of sherry.