My uncle died this past May.

I haven’t written about him yet, because I am teeming with memories and happiness and grief. We moved into our new apartment at the end of April and two days afterward, my mom called me with the news that this was it - it was time to come home. I quickly got the first available flight out of Chicago to Providence, and Mom came and picked us up. The three of us left on one-way tickets - I left work that day thrusting my keys into the hands of a coworker, asking her through tears to walk Ava in the morning and evening. She took them, graciously, and took care of my pup. That was a Monday.

We spent the day after in the hospital the entire day. When I saw my JoJo, he was gaunt. I could see every bone on his body. He laid on his side and slept fitfully, having had a particularly bad night in the hospital. The hospital gown draped over him disjointedly. He moaned occasionally in pain. His passing was at once heartbreaking and relieving - he pulled in the people closest to him and told him how much he loved them, what his hopes and wishes for them were, amidst the tears of anguish and grief. When he finally passed, comfortable at last from the intense pain that the cancer eating away at his body caused (amusingly enough to me, he was on the same medications I was when I was initially in labor, and if the pain is anything similar, I know my uncle died a very relieved man), we were all there with him. Talking and smiling and listening to music - The Beatles, his favorite - that his eldest daughter had brought in on a CD/DVD player for him to listen to. The same CD/DVD player she’d gifted him with for Christmas one year so he could have something to listen to while he spent hours attached to the chemotherapy machines that pumped his body full of toxins, futilely.

I miss my JoJo so much. I have so many memories of him that make me double over in laughter. And, at the age of 30, I am just simply used to having two uncles, twin uncles. I am used to having an uncle who is older and who is younger (by something like 20 minute) and having that difference mean the world in family dynamics. JoJo used to tell me that when they were kids, my two uncles would take turns breaking each others’ noses and beating each other up. “Now, when I look to the side,” he said, shifting his eyes to the left or right, “I can see my other eyeball!”

His wake was the Friday after his passing. Hundreds of people came to pay their respects to my JoJo. There were people I hadn’t seen since I was a kid and spent summers with my uncle in Connecticut - high school friends of my JoJo came to give my auntie a hug. It was amazing to see the impact he had during his fifty-three years here.

Old habits die hard. Josh and I IM each other from time to time during the day:

Josh: You got a card from your uncle.
Casey: Which one?

That just fell right out of my fingers before I remembered.