saying goodbye

Early morning phone calls are never good. So when my mom called at 6:00 this morning, I expected it was bad news. My uncle was in a terrible car accident this morning and most of my family were headed to Indy to gather around his bed and say goodbye because it didn't look good. When I gathered myself and headed out the door, I read today's NaPoWriMo prompt: valediction. I imagined that, when I sat down this evening to write, that I would likely be writing it for my uncle. Thankfully that is not the case. It would appear (so far) that he has inherited my grandfather's nine lives and may actually pull through the tremendous head trauma he has suffered. For the sake of his kids and my grandparents, I am extremely grateful. He is also one of the last family members I would want to say goodbye to. My uncle has never been anything great. He's not the smartest, he can never hold down a job, he's been divorced, suffered from drug addiction, been in jail, and will never be the person in the family that anyone is especially proud of. But he has something that overshadows any faults he has had over the years. His enormous capacity to love. He is one of the few family members who has never made me feel like an outsider and never made fun of my glasses, my bucked teeth, my intelligence, or my failed relationships. Whenever I see him, I am greeted with an enormous grin and the warmest of hugs. This goes back as long as I can remember. As a girl, you get a lot of "you can't do that" or "that's for boys". My uncle never did that. He taught me how to fish and, when he beaned me in the eye with a softball, gave me a hug and let me try again. I've always adored him and continue to send good thoughts that he will keep the brain swelling at bay and fight through this and have many great years left with his kids. 

It got me thinking today about goodbyes. I've never been comfortable with sitting around a waiting room waiting for someone to pass on and I find funerals to be a morbid display of untruths and fake emotions. However, in the end, I think what makes me the most uncomfortable is not actually death but the goodbyes that last forever. Losing anyone I care about, whether it be the end of a relationship, an irreparable friendship fight, or death, is unbearable to me. The worst part was that the only person I wanted to talk to today falls into one of those categories and I'm finding it impossible to come to terms with that goodbye. Every bit of logic and evidence says that they're long gone and never coming back but every bit of my heart is holding on to something that I can't fix. All I wanted was a hug and to sit and talk to them like we used to but, in the end, other things and other people were more important than I was and I think it's time, for real, to let go of the lie, accept that they're not coming back, and say goodbye. I don't really know that it's the kind of goodbye that you ever get over and I will always hold them in my heart but I can't keep wishing and hoping they'll show up and apologize and I can't keep waiting.