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My Great-Uncle was amazing. I have so many memories of visiting him when I was little. In the summer we would sit around his pond, me spending hours trying to prod the fish with a long stick, or delving around in his shed in delight at all the mysterious things he kept there. In winter, we would stay indoors and sit by his fire where I would play with the stone figure of a dog that sat beside it.
He always reminded me a little of Einstein. He was clever, and looked just like him. He always seemed busy with some little project, and even ran for his county in his younger days. He was the figure of health and happiness.
That’s why when the day I found out he had cancer, I could barely believe it. I refused to believe it. He’d get better fast, I reasoned. Why shouldn’t he?
He deteriorated more and more as the months went on, not only physically but mentally as well. His pain was constant, and he wasn’t the relaxed and happy-go-lucky man I knew who loved nothing more than to see his family playing in his vast, well-tended garden.
His skeletal form that finally sat in the hospital chair was horrifying. His sunken eyes showed the anguish he didn’t speak about. He barely spoke except to ask for water.
In the end, I didn’t cry at his death. Part of me feels awful for it, but I just couldn’t cry. He wasn’t who he was. He was in constant agony and I hated it. I hated whatever would give such a wonderful person such an awful end to their life. I hated me for not being able to get rid of it – to make everything ok again.
In his death he was free from all that. The pain was gone, the loss of independence and dignity had disappeared.
I was never a religious person, but that day I prayed that where ever he was, he was tending a vast garden once again, smiling as he always smiled, surrounded by the family that had passed on before him.
The stone dog sits by my fire now – a constant reminder of one of the greatest men in my life.
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