I’ve been trying to figure out whether I should write this entry and if so, how to write it. Mostly I use this blog to talk about random life stuff, funny little things that happen to me, and the bumps and obstacles (as well as the occasional triumphs) I encounter in my life as a writer. So, I don’t know if this is appropriate to write about here or not. But it is part of my life and one of the ways I deal with stuff in my life, particularly not so good stuff, is to write about it. It’s one of the few ways that allows me to actually see what’s going on. Maybe it’s just me or maybe not, but writing about something gives it a reality that it didn’t have before.

A lot of life is in the feeling of it. The pain or joy that marks out a particular day from the ho-hum ordinary of the rest of the week. To ignore the feeling seems wrong. To not write about it seems even more wrong. Writing records that feeling, something that we need to give it even more meaning, I think.

So here it is. I’ll write it and I’ll write it here because it’s probably the only way I’ll convince myself to examine such raw emotion so closely again. I’m not a big fan of confrontation, and Stacey confronting Stacey is rarely pretty.

But first, a disclaimer. I’m writing this for me. I’m not writing this to preach to anyone, to gain sympathy or praise, or to make anyone feel bad for anyone else. I’m writing it because I need to, because I want to memorialize for myself what happened in a manner that I consider respectful.

So, get on with it, Stacey…I’m putting off the confrontation already, can you tell?

I should have known something was wrong when I answered my cell phone last Thursday evening. But unlike the movies, I didn’t have the ominous music to tell me that what I thought was simply odd was actually a harbinger of bad news.

My dad is on the other end of my cell phone. More clues here. First, my dad rarely calls me without some purpose. When I call home, he’ll answer sometimes and we’ll chat, but he doesn’t really call me up just to talk. He’s more of an in-person kind of talker, probably due to his profession (he’s a minister). Second, it's nine-thirty at night. Not late, but not a time for calling just to chat (which, see above, he wouldn’t do.) Third, he's calling my cell phone. My parents both have the number, but their typical pattern is to leave a message at home, assuming that if I’m out somewhere I must be doing something important enough not to interrupt.

But I miss the clues. Instead I blithely chatter away about how our one phone in the house, a cordless, was in my husband’s office so we missed hearing the ring over the sound of the Olympics on television. And I say to my dad, “So, what’s up?” Again, feeling more curious than alarmed.

He proceeds to tell me that he got a call from my Uncle David, my dad’s youngest brother. By now, my dad has said enough words that I know something isn’t quite right with him. His tone is flat and not projecting at all, which, if you know my dad, is the exact opposite of how he normally speaks.

As his words sink in, I feel the first twinge of alarm. My Uncle David is like my dad, I think, not someone who calls up just to have a chat. My first thought is that something is wrong with my Grandma Barnes. She lives in Arizona, which makes my Uncle David in Texas her closest relative in an emergency. My grandma is in fine health—spunky as hell, too—but she also does things like hiking and outdoorish stuff that can get a person hurt. Like me. Even thinking about hiking makes my blister-prone toes hurt.

Now, most people would probably have prefaced the next part of the conversation with, “I have some bad news.” Or, “You might want to sit down.” But my dad doesn’t, partly because he probably realizes that only ramps up the tension and also because he’s probably still reeling with the news so recently given to him.

He says, “Uncle David got a call from your Aunt Cindy’s sister-in-law.”

By now, pieces are starting to fall into place in my head, but they’re making a very confusing picture. The dread in my stomach is increasing, and I can feel myself starting to shake on the inside. Something is wrong, really wrong, I can tell that much. But it’s not my grandma. My Aunt Cindy is married to my Uncle Roger, my dad’s middle brother. Why would Aunt Cindy’s sister-in-law be calling my Uncle David about anything unless…

“It seems your Uncle Roger--” he says.

Boom. Silent explosion in my head. All the puzzle pieces suddenly snap together in a
crazy picture that makes no sense but is unavoidably true.

I make no attempt to hold it together because the shock of the realization is too much in the moment. “Daddy, do I need to sit down for this?” I ask. I realize dimly that I’ve reverted to calling my dad, “Daddy,” something I never do except in high emotion.

Even as he tells me, “Yes,” I’m hoping he’ll say, “No.” That he’ll tell me to “calm down” and that I’m “overreacting.” But he doesn’t. Then I find myself thinking, Maybe it’s just a horrible injury. Maybe he’s just in the hospital. At this point, I’m clearly pursuing the car accident theory, the only explanation I can think of for this kind of phone call about my Uncle Roger, who is only 51 years old and not sick at all that I know of.

But even before my dad speaks again, I know that’s not what he’s going to tell me. It’s not that kind of phone call.

Not one who deals well with change or shock, I’m falling apart on the phone before I even know the details, so much so that my dad says, “You’re not making this any easier.”

So I take a deep breath and try to hold myself together long enough for him to get the rest of the story out. Which he does, very quickly. Probably because he knows the window provided by my tenuous hold on my emotions is very small indeed and maybe because he’s a follower of the ripping off the band-aid theory.

“He was exercising on the treadmill and then went to lay down on the couch to watch some television. When your Aunt Cindy came to get him for dinner, she couldn’t rouse him.”

And right then I realize I’m wrong. The vague theory I developed in the last thirty seconds that not knowing is probably worse than knowing is blown to bits. Hearing it aloud makes it much, much worse.

“They think it was a heart attack, but they’re not sure. We don’t know yet about the funeral services.”

Funeral. God, does that word ever sound more final that when it’s referring to someone you love?

Now, so far, this probably doesn’t seem any different than any other story of someone else who you don’t know who died. But let me attempt to fix that. In my dad’s family, there are…there were three brothers. But, as my dad would say, four boys. My Grandpa Barnes was still a kid on the inside. Christmas at their house with my uncles, my aunts and my cousins was something to be looked forward to for weeks ahead of time. Not just because of the presents, though, of course, those were great, too. But just the atmosphere. It was fun to be around my dad and his brothers and my grandpa and grandma because they clearly loved being together. So much fun and silliness to be had. There was always some new game to try out—the one I remember most clearly involved Barbie-sized basketball hoops that suction-cupped to the table and you had to try to bounce a ping pong ball into one of the baskets score points. I remember my Uncle Roger spending a couple hours at the game table with that one. I also remember a time when I watched enviously from the window (I was ALWAYS sick at Christmas) as my dad and my uncles built the tallest snow man I’d ever seen (like eight feet tall—in fact, it seems to me there was some difficulty attaching the snowman’s head because no one was tall enough) in the backyard. How weird it was to see my dad and his brothers acting like little kids and how jealous I was that I couldn’t go out and participate.

When my Grandpa Barnes died twelve years ago, a lot of the joy left Christmas for me. It was too hard for my grandma after that to have Christmas at her house, so she spent that part of the year in Arizona. My Uncle David and Aunt Lynne had little kids and a long drive if they were to come all the way from Texas. But my Uncle Roger and Aunt Cindy would sometimes make the drive from Kansas to our house for Christmas, and a little of spark of Christmas-that-was would flare again. My Dad and my uncle would joke around and my dad’s mood would take on a rare buoyancy. One of my favorite memories is the time my parents took everyone out to Jonah’s, a seafood restaurant in town, and my Uncle Roger ordered some kind of spicy gumbo, which he loved, and we laughed until tears rolled as he continued to insist he loved it even as he dabbed the sweat from his forehead.

My Uncle Roger was the only other person in my immediate family to have red hair and pale skin. I think that bonded us even further. My mom says that when I was young and we all used to go out together, passers-by used to think that I was his daughter instead of my dad’s. Not too surprising, given that, aside from hair and coloring, he and my dad look a lot alike. He was one of the few people I remember speaking to me like I was a person instead of just a little kid, and, of course, I ate it up with a spoon. All little kids want to be taken seriously.

When I was really little, I think he was the one who brought me a dinosaur hunting license, which I loved. It had all these official rules on it, like only one brontosaurus per hunting season and no females. I still have that somewhere, I think. It fired my imagination, thinking of world in which you could hunt dinosaurs and wondering what that would be like. That license made me feel powerful, special. At his wedding reception, when I was in fifth grade and on the brink of the hormonal hell known as puberty, I stood crying in the corner because I was in the bridal party but no one was going to ask me to dance. But my Uncle Roger, in the midst of all the happy chaos on such a day, stopped whatever he was supposed to be doing and asked me to dance. And he said it was okay when I warned him I would probably step on his shiny white shoes.

And where does all of this lead? To a dim room in the back of a funeral home, filled with the heavy scent of lilies—always funeral flowers to me—and my Uncle Roger, paler and more still than he’d ever been in real life. It was unnerving, not just seeing someone you love dead, which is unnerving enough, but seeing someone who had always been so full of motion and quick to smile and joke being so unnaturally quiet. Empty. And his resemblance to my father was never more shocking than in this situation.

He’s gone and it feels like the world has shifted. Like when you’re drunk and you reach for your glass, but you miss it by an inch because your depth perception is off. Except this time, it only feels like the world has shifted. When I reach for a glass, I get it on the first try. Phones keep ringing. People are still working. Babies are still being born. But the world is not the same. Because I’ve realized, not for the first time, that life isn’t always going to work out the way I picture that it will. Everybody already knows this. Life is inherently unpredictable. Death can be capricious and cruel. We’ve learned this lesson over and over again. But it never seems to stick. I want it to stick. I want to remember so that the next time life knocks me down I’ll be expecting it and maybe it won’t hurt as much. I want to remember so that I’ll appreciate what I have and who I have in my life before they’re taken from me. I want to change my life so that I won’t have any regrets, or fewer of them, at least.

The last time I saw my Uncle Roger was probably six or seven years ago at Christmas time. My husband and I, newlyweds at the time, hung out as long as possible at my parents’ house, hoping to see my aunt and uncle for a few minutes as they arrived and we left for home. I remember we delayed until dark, something we don’t normally do because it’s a long drive as it is and in the dark, it feels even longer. But I wanted to see them.

They arrived just as we were literally starting to pull away. Our dog was already in the car and the engine running. I think I got out of the car and hugged them and said hello and talked for a few minutes. What kills me is that I don’t really remember what we said or how long we talked. Nor do I remember why we had to get back Chicago that night, work or other family obligations possibly, but looking back on it now, I kick myself for not staying just one more night. For not taking one more vacation day. I could have had that one last spark-filled Christmas. And now I can’t. One day, my siblings, my cousins and I will be the only ones around who remember such Christmases existed.

So what am I trying to say? The same thing we all already know. Today might be your last or the last of someone you love. Do something about it. Say “I love you” when you can. Remember that work is not everything, even if you enjoy it or it just consumes you. Appreciate what you have because you will not have it forever. That’s the only guarantee in life.

I say all these words for myself, more than for anyone else. I need to remember all of this, or else I’ll find myself, once again, walking through the dead grass to a new grave with so many things that I want to say and no one to hear them.