Uncle Pete

Saturday:

2015 has been a nightmare for my family. I'm thinking maybe I should just go to bed with the covers over my head until it is over.

As you know, both my parents died in the first half of this year. In between, my mum's little sister Bev died at 66 of stomach cancer, eleven days after she was diagnosed. Obviously leaving her three children and my Uncle Brian in shock. And now Uncle Brian's identical twin brother Pete has died.

Uncle Brian and family lived only two doors down from us when I was growing up and we lived in each other's houses. I remember quite often going over there and seeing Brian on the balcony smoking but something being subtly wrong - then realising it was Uncle Pete visiting (not really my uncle, but close enough). They both smoked and drank quite heavily during that period but Pete was the less healthy of the two and that made the difference to his face. He would have been mid-sixties when he died, so young. Uncle Brian must be devastated (I haven't spoken to him yet, I heard from my cousin). His children have all married and scattered around the world in the last few years, and his wife and twin dying within months leaves him all alone. I hate to think of it. I wasn't close to Uncle Pete but I was very close to Bev and Brian and all their children.

I had thought my Poppa, my mother's father who is still quite hale at 97 and living in his own home without assistance, would be next to die and I have been fearing it since mum died. But everyone else keeps dying instead. And I still worry about Poppa. I don't know how much more grief my family can take, but I suppose we have to deal with it. You don't get a choice.