I guess i'm lucky.

I've made it through 31 years of my life without losing a close family member. I lost both my paternal grandparents when I was in high school, but didn't really develop a relationship with them before they passed. Sorry if it sounds harsh, but I feel like that's why we have grandparents, to soften our experience with death at an early age.

I got the call at 6:30 this morning; my uncle Al had passed away at age 58. Of all the family I have, i'd say he was the closest to me, or at least the one I've had the most interaction with  on my father's side. He has 2 sons that are close to my age and a daughter who is just a bit older. Aside from his obvious physical likeness to my father, they were nothing alike. My father was the strict teetotaler, with rules and punishment whereas Al, for better or worse let his kids experiment and make their own mistakes. He was blunt, candid and wasn't afraid to tell me that "I better stop fucking up" and I appreciated his ability to say it without any anger or resentment; maybe that was just the inherent disconnect that comes from being an uncle.

It's amazing to me that after all of the friends I've lost, all of these people that I've shared way more moments with, this one is getting to me more. Maybe it's because I've got to watch family members grieve. Maybe it's because he's family. Maybe it's because he's my father's younger brother and this makes me think of my own father's mortality. Maybe it's just that he's one of the few people in my family that I actually liked. I don't know maybe it's a combination of all of that.

I'm scared to see how this affects my dad's family. He was the baby. The baby isn't supposed to go first. We all thought we had more time with him; 2 weeks ago they said 3-6 months. A week ago they said 1-2 weeks. Yesterday they said a day or two. It just goes to show how fast things can go when they go bad. I'm going to regret that I didn't get over to see him before he died for a long time. I thought I had more time.

I hope this is the end of bad news for a while, but so far 2010 has just been a big pile of suck.