In an earlier thread, I mentioned that my uncle had cancer - everywhere. Face, brain, lung, kidney bones. He’s been declining pretty steadily for about two months now, but has rapidly gotten worse in the last two weeks. They suspected liver failure two weeks ago, and his doctor gave him a month to live. Initially she had said two weeks to two months, then up to a year. It seems as though her first guess wasn’t far off.
He’s back in the hospital as of yesterday. Slipping in and out of conciousness and hallucinating. Luckily, four of the siblings live within an hour or two, and my mom and her baby sister raced up this afternoon after getting the call.
He has asked (or made known) that we nieces and nephews not come up. So we won’t. I don’t even know if my job would “let me” right now, as the other half of our accounting department is on vacation in South America and won’t return until December 3. We’re not real busy right now, so I can hope. Well, I should say that they can hope it’s on a weekend, 'cause I’m going. Whenever, you know?
I’ve been having a hard enough time keeping myself together lately, knowing that this Thanksgiving (that we planned on going up to Michigan for) would be his last. And now he may not even make it that long. Luckily we have a conference room at work that’s usually empty, so I can disappear throughout the day as I need to.
My coworkers have been really considerate about my mood swings and abrupt tears, but I just can’t help thinking about something one of the older guys (late 50s - 60s) said the other day. “You know, there are plenty of people walking around who were ‘supposed to be’ dead years ago.” My morbid that which followed was, “Yeah, but there’s probably more people dead who should’ve been around for a whole lot longer!”
Yeah, yeah - it’s not in our hands, God has a plan, everything happens for a reason. Normally, I’m a staunch supporter of such ideas, but right now is the time when I’m thinking “must be a pretty shitty plan for my uncle!!!”
Well, I’ve gotta go to the store (of all things) and buy bird food. I’m sure I’ll be back.