death

I arrived home from picking my son up from school to see the red light blinking on my cell phone. I checked missed calls: someone at my parents' house had called. There was a message, so I dialed the message system. I heard my mom's voice start, then hesitate. Oh no, something is wrong. Did you get the email that Your Uncle passed away? she said. That's all she said.

My face showed the shock, and my husband asked what the matter was. My heart sank, and I felt myself begin to cry. Seeing I couldn't tell him quite yet, not through the tears, he turned away to give me a minute. This is one of those times family should be together, I thought. I want to go to the funeral. When is it? I logged on to the computer to check the email for more information, and said aloud, "My Uncle died. My mom's brother. He'd been sick." The email gave a little more information, that he died Sunday, peacefully.

I called my mom, and she filled in a few more details. I wanted to cry, but held back because my mom's voice seemed perfectly controlled, normal. Plus, I hate crying on the phone. After I got off the phone, I cried a little more.

The thing is, I hardly know my uncle. He knows me as just one of his many nieces--someone always had to tell him which one I was. He lived far away. I don't think I met him until I was nine, and didn't even know who he was when he walked into my grandma's house and greeted us kids familiarly. That summer, he took us to the fishing hole and showed us where the blackberry bushes were. He talk us how to walk around a horse without startling it. He had a few wild stories about getting in fights (which explained his missing teeth) and growing up on a ranch. He's the one that taught me how to shoot a pellet gun, aiming at his empty beer cans, and told me to shoot the rats in the yard. (I shot one, felt too guilty, I never did again.)

Since then, I've hardly seen him. Just at big events, a funeral, a wedding. His death had been expected for years. His health had been frail, partly from his hard drinking and smoking. Last time I saw him, this summer, he was in a wheelchair and his voice was slurred from a stroke. I talked to him, and waited with what I hope was a patient smile as his forced his words out. He was complimenting my smile.

Why, if I knew him so little, is his death affecting me this much, then?

He's the first death in the family since I stopped believing I'd see all my family again in heaven.

When I heard the phone message, I remembered a dream I had last night, with his deceased father, my grandfather, in it. I saw him there, and I hugged him and cried and cried for the chance to hug him again. The dream was emotional enough to jar me awake. When I connected the dream to the real-life death of my uncle, I started thinking:

It's odd, isn't it, that I had two dreams about my grandpa in the past week, and then his son dies? Could it mean something, some connection, from beyond?

No, I reprimanded myself, it's just a dream. A coincidence that I assigned significance to. Had I had the dream two months ago, I wouldn't have thought it odd. There is no afterlife, silly.

Stop being so smug about my new beliefs, I countered myself. I used to be so sure there was an afterlife--and I criticize myself for being so sure. Now to be so sure there isn't one? Isn't that just as bad, as inflexible?

Okay, good point, I conceded. But there is no evidence for it. We just don't know. That's the best we can say. No one actually knows. But it is safe to assume, to live my life on the assumption that there is no afterlife. That the afterlife was just invented by humans once their brains got big enough to wonder what happened after death.

He's gone. Gone, and I won't see him again.

So how do I handle this? I mourn. I try to grasp my own mortality. Remember that I need to get know people now, while I can. He's younger than my own mom and dad. Younger, and gone.

Funerals are about family and friends mourning loved ones, together. So I should be there. And I should leave behind my politics of they're-Mormon-I'm-humanist-so-what-are-we-going-to-do-about-it? Just be there. Give my mom and her sisters, their mom hugs to express my sympathy and sadness that their brother and son is gone.

Cry that he's gone. Cry that I never got to know him. Cry that I never got to talk to him about why he hadn't gone to church since I-don't-even-know-when. Cry for the deaths of my grandpa, my friend, my cousin, the others whose funerals I attended, confident I would see again after they buried them in the ground. Cry for the the loss of the afterlife, and for the loss of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother, who will never open their arms to me and say, Welcome home, you did well.

Goodbye, Uncle, you did well. I'll smile for you. I know you liked my smile.