Day break

I’m sad. The world is sad. Another mass shooting in California last night. And this morning the news the my Uncle Al has died, that wonderful man who so championed me, who openly and unabashedly hoped I would be his daughter in law but then fully supported my relationship with the man I would ultimately marry, whom he had known since my husband was a boy. He had been my husband’s family doctor in Antigua, and before that he and my Aunt Myra had become close friends of my parents when he was studying medicine in England and my dad was there studying law. They were part of an expat student community there, young men and women from the many different islands of the Caribbean pursuing medicine and law. Uncle Al and the lovely Myra became parents to two sons and two daughters, including a woman my age who would become like a sister, and who in 1983 would introduce me to my future husband. It was in Uncle Al’s home that I stayed when I visited my husband in Antigua in the years before we were married. Uncle Al talked to us both of love, of growing old together, his wit and wisdom the very definition of sparkling. I have always thought of him as the godfather of my relationship, an example my husband and I could follow into the future, a beacon of how to be. And now he is gone, and it hit me harder than I was expecting, perhaps because I am sad right now about other things too. Strange how sadness and worry can blot out the light, reducing consciousness to a pinprick, and you have to remind yourself to breathe. And yet the last thing you want is to add another layer to anyone else’s portion of pain, and so you must carry the big rock sitting on your chest like the stoic you aren’t, keep doing life somehow, praying that everyone and everything will be healed, comforted, redeemed. This earth life is messy and hard. For the 97 years he was here, Uncle Al made it less so.