The news that my uncle only has been given several days to live has come as a big shock to me. I knew that he was ill but when you know that someone you have seen less of over the years the guilt seems to flow.
He’s not the closest of relatives that I have, in fact he is not a blood relative he is a man who married my aunty before I was born. Yet he was always there for me as a child, used to take me to play cricket or walk dogs and he always would speak to me as an adult not a child.
Of all of my relatives I would have described him as one of the fittest. His son, my cousin died of a heart attack at a fairly young age and immediately my uncle and aunty sought medical advice to see if it was hereditary.
I think with any relative that has been given no chance of survival you always begin to question yourself. “Should I have visited more often?”, “Why didn’t I go to those family events I avoided for the past decade?” I know that these questions are just analysing the guilt and potential sorrow that will follow my Uncle’s death but right now those are the only feelings that seem to be going around my head.
I’ve lost a lot of people in my life, far more than many my own age and I have started to feel that I should celebrate life in death yet there is always that guilt that seems to follow around like a dark shadow.
We all handle death in a different way; I guess that this will be a hard one to take.
