Fly Into the Light of the Dark Black Night

I stood out on my cousin's back porch from about one o'clock in the morning until three, drinking Miller High Life and staring at the spot where I last saw my uncle and kissed him goodbye before I headed home to New York. There I stood alone, wondering how this could have happened. I saw him two months ago. His newest grandson is just six weeks old. My five cousins are young, ranging in age from 13 to 26. They still need their dad. How could something so small take down such a large force?

The day before was a Wednesday. I was sleeping and in my dreams I heard my cell phone vibrating across the room. It went off over and over. Finally I realized the phone was ringing in real life and I got out of my bed and took my cell off the charger. I flipped it open and saw that I had nine missed calls. One from my aunt and eight from my sister. My heart sunk. I thought something had happened to my 80-year-old grandmother. I called my sister back. To my surprise and horror, the bad news was about my mom's little brother, my Uncle Brian. She said he was in the hospital with a blood infection from a cut on his leg. He was in critical condition and not responding to medicine. My aunt and my grandma were already on the road to Pennsylvania where my cousins were waiting for them at the hospital.

I immediately sent a text all of my cousins asking them what was going on. I was waiting for a response, telling me that they message had been warped and that he was on antibiotics and he'd be just fine. I figured I'd go out there over the weekend and bring him a six-pack of some exotic beer and we'd sneak drinking it in the hospital room when the nurses weren't looking. No one answered me. After 45 minutes of gut-wrenching anxiety I sent a text message to my oldest cousin's husband asking him if everything was alright. He sent me a message back saying that his wife would call me in a little bit. I took that two ways. First, I thought everything was okay and they were in no rush to call me back. Then I thought, what if everything isn't okay, what if they can't call me because he's going downhill. I almost threw up.

Finally about four hours after the first notification, my cousin called me. I ran outside to talk to her, away from my daughter, who talks through all my phone conversations. I said, "What's going on? Is everything okay?" She said, calmly and matter-of-factly, "They admitted him at four o'clock this morning. There was a cut on his leg that got infected and it got into his blood. They put him on the respirator. There was nothing else they could do, Jeri, he's gone." It seemed like minutes until I could breathe again to ask her to repeat herself, but in reality, the words came right away. I thought I heard her wrong. She said, "He died, Jer." Then she started to cry. I said, "Oh my god, Meg, I'm so sorry. How could this happen?" She said, "I don't know."

The doctors wanted to talk to her, so she said she'd call me in a little bit. I went into my house holding back the tears and walked upstairs to my older sister's house. When she saw me the color drained out of her face. She said, "What happened? What's wrong?" I have no poker face and I never cry. If I well up, you know something bad has happened. I told her that our uncle had passed away. She covered her mouth and her eyes started to water and said the same thing I had said minutes earlier, "How did this happen?". She ran to tell her husband and I called our younger sister. I caught her just in time, she was about to leave for school. She went into hysterics immediately. I told her to come to our house. Then I called my dad at work. He couldn't believe it, he didn't even know my uncle had gone into the hospital that morning. He said he'd be right over. My sister and I had to go up to our mom's job to tell her. I felt like military officers walking up to a widow's house and bombarding her with bad news. She knew something was wrong when she saw the two of us standing outside her classroom door. She cried as soon as, if not before, the words came out of Kathy's mouth. She was going to finish up at work an meet us at our house. As we all sat in the living room, we wondered the same question over and over. How could something like this kill him?

My Uncle Brian, who was also my godfather, was larger than life in personality, size and heart. He stood six feet and four inches tall with a football player's build. He was taller than his kindergarten teacher and was taller than my mom by the time she was eight and he was five. He was a prankster and tortured his sisters with his shenanigans. He was athletic and popular. Uncle Brian was captain of the football, baseball and basketball teams in high school. He started dating his future wife when they were around 16 or 17 years old. They married and had five children, four girls and one boy. They moved their family from Long Island to Pennsylvania in 1991. Although far away from the rest of our close-knit family in miles, our bonds were never broken. We visited them and they visited us and all of us kids looked forward to the gatherings every time. As a matter of fact, I consider my cousins to be like more sisters and a brother and five of my best friends.

Shortly after I learned to drive and got a car I started taking random trips out to see them, more often than my parents knew about. Sometimes I would go for the day, other times I'd stay for a while. When all my cousins were at work or school, my uncle and I would sit around and hang out. He'd bring out these crazy beers that no one had ever heard of and we'd sample them all. He'd play Jimmy Buffett for me on his guitar. He would tell me jokes, most of them awful, but we'd laugh hysterically anyway. It's those times I look back on now and wished I had held on to a little longer. He lived every moment of his life to the fullest and never took anything too seriously. I like to think I inherited that trait from him as well as his affinity for anything with Hawaiian print. He was always wearing a Hawaiian shirt. He had a special nickname for each of his kids as well as my sisters, our other cousin and me. He and my aunt called me "Jeri Pins". My aunt put her arm around me at the viewing while I stood in front of him and said, "He loved you. You were his Jeri Pins." That was the only time I couldn't keep it together. He always treated me more like another daughter and less like a niece and that meant so much to me. I only wish I could have told him that.

It will be three weeks tomorrow since he passed away. Our family is still reeling. No one can understand why this had to happen. He was only 53. I seem to be stuck somewhere in shock/sadness/anger, although the shock is now slowly fading. Now I'm either upset or pissed. Sometimes I feel like I can't breathe when I think about him. I feel like our family got cheated out of another 30 years with the greatest father/son/brother/uncle/grandfather/great-uncle I've ever known. My heart is broken, selfishly for me, but it's shattered for my cousins. It seriously hurts me to see them like this. I want to help them and fix this, but I can't. There is nothing anyone can do. I feel helpless. I can't even help myself through this, there's no way I can help anyone else. I have him with me always, in my heart and also in the urn necklace my cousins got for me.

Funny side story about him, a few months ago he was here visiting. We were all at my grandma's house. I was leaving with more crap than I showed up with, as usual, because my Grammy loves to send me home with stuff. He grabbed the bags and walked me and my daughter out to my car. I kissed him goodbye and told my kid to give Uncle Brian a hug and a kiss goodbye. She kissed him and said, "Bye, Uncle Friend." Uncle Bri and I laughed and he said, "Uncle Friend, I like that, I'll keep it." and I laughed harder and told him, "Uncle Friend sounds creepy!" and I continued in a creepy old man voice, "Hey little kiddies, I'm Uncle Friend, want to come home with me?" He cracked up and told me he didn't care if it sounded creepy he thought it was cute that my 2-year-old made it up. Thinking back on it now, my daughter was right. That's who he was, my uncle and my friend.

True to the way he lived his life in love and laughter, he had a smirk on his face at his wake. That is so him. Smiling as always and loving everything. Nothing in life should be taken too seriously because life can sometimes be taken far before we expect it to be. You should never be unhappy with your life and love your family and friends like today is your last day.

I love you forever, Uncle Bri! Thanks for the memories!