Oh, I hope you run into them, you who’ve been travelling so long

My Uncle Ronnie died this morning. He was one of the eldest children in my father’s family, and one of the last to go. Out of a family of ten children, there are 3 left. With every loss I feel like more of a dying breed. I always relied on my father to keep me updated on my uncles, aunts, and the dozens of children that came from them. When my father died, my world was suddenly this tiny fishbowl that I didn’t recognize. I thought that I would be able to somehow keep up with at least some of these people the way that he did. Surely, I could pick and choose at least some extended family to hold on to. And I’ve done what I could. I’ve tried. I really have. But all of the thoughts I have about reaching out to others, writing letters, making calls, being helpful to those in need…these good intentions are by and large all that I’ve managed. It’s something I am not sure if I should keep trying to fix (unsuccessfully) or that I should accept as not being my piece of the greater puzzle. Even now, this digression is a perfect example of how easily I will start something before becoming lost in something else.

In between the day of my wedding (June 2010) and my return from my honeymoon, Uncle Ronnie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. While I have learned considerably more about cancer since then, I did understand at the time that pancreatic cancer was vicious and quick. Hearing about Ronnie’s illness was a blow. Everything I had heard taught me that my uncle had very little time, maybe a few months.  How very brutal and unkind for a man who had lost his long time wife, the mother of his children, several years before and had brought his new partner to my wedding. He seemed happy. Content.

The things I knew of pancreatic cancer weren’t wrong. But we aren’t people who take defeat easily. He kept going and going and going. When I was diagnosed with cancer, he asked about me often. My father said that he was upset by it, in a way that I understand much more now, having gone through it. Cancer creates this reluctant but unavoidable bond between people. You gain quick membership into an elite club that everyone wishes didn’t exist in the first place. But that’s what happens. A person who is a superficial acquaintance changes into a trusted confidant when survival or maybe just coping becomes a new skill.

So my uncle and I would always ask about the other. We exchanged a few emails and cards. A few months before my father died, he told me that Ronnie had decided to stop chemotherapy. Nobody could blame him. He had lived much longer than any doctors expected. The chemo wasn’t going to save him. He had suffered through it over and over again to gain a few months here and there. He fought with everything that he possibly could, but he was tired.

When I heard that Ronnie would be attending my father’s services, I expected the worst. I had seen what cancer had done to a vital 30 year old. I expected my uncle to be unrecognizable, he had to be by now. Yet, the 2 1/2 years of chemo and all the ravaging it does to one’s body seemed to have very little effect on Uncle Ronnie. He looked amazing. He was the same uncle I knew all of my life. He told me that he felt really good that day. It was one of the few bright moments from that horrible night. I found myself hopeful. That maybe he was going to be that miracle patient that walked away from terminal cancer. Even as I thought it, I knew that luck runs out eventually.

Ronnie was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in June 2010. Medical knowledge said he didn’t have long. I think it was 6 months, but I’m not sure. I am sure that Ronnie outlived my bout with cancer, my marriage, my recovery from critical condition and the 12 broken bones that got me there. He outlived more than half of his siblings, including my father. He outlived, just in the last year, a large handful of my loved ones. He didn’t just survive, he lived. And he lived with grace. I thank him for that.