I found out Sunday that my favorite uncle passed. I felt the familiar buzzing sensation, weakness in the knees, and then nausea.  His name was Vito Speziale, and if you doubted my Italian heritage, you won’t now. The world has lost two amazing men in a matter of months, two father figures, one literal, and one who I have looked up to since I was a child.

We were about to head out to a bar to watch the season opener of the Timbers when I got the text. I immediately said, let’s still go, it will do me some good. Once a few minutes passed of me walking in circles, I said, I can’t do it. F (so, I am not going to name my husband, I am public enough with my feelings and life, I want to give him some privacy, but it makes it easier to use an initial vs saying, my husband). Anyways, F said, I will go get dinner. I mumbled thank you. I tuned into the game and brought my laptop to try and do some work.

Death has an interesting affect on me now. I get this fuzzy disassociated feeling, like floating above it all. I can’t focus, make decisions, or do much for that matter. My uncle was old, everytime I talked to him, he was mad that he was still alive. When my dad passed, who he was very close to, more like brothers than cousins, he went downhill fast. My dad was not supposed to go before him. So, the text was not a surprise. The intense waves of grief were. I feel like it is this compounding effect. Another onion layer taken off exposing more of the stuff that makes you cry.

I sat there staring at the TV, sorta watching the game. F asked how are you? I blurted out: I don’t know what it is called, the bow, the stern, that thing in the middle, you know, the one that holds the sail? I feel like that just broke, like the wind just went out of my sails, that I was stagnant in this feeling, this grief, this never ending fucking sadness.  It is super legit sadness. And I work with it, everyday.  But this back to back, my dad, now my uncle. On top of what I already deal with, or don’t in terms of Bella. And Jesse.  And my mom. It is too much.

I have asked often, how much does it need to be before the heart just says, ok, enough, you are past the point of repair dude. Frankly, this week feels like that for me. I know. Believe me, I know the intensity will pass, sadly I know it all too well from experience. The intensity passes, the loss never does. The missing. The part of your heart that that person occupied physically, gone, a piece missing. I know, you can’t take the memories away, those stay. But now they are bittersweet. You can’t just call and say, remember when…? You sit there with that longing that happens with their absence.

I had to call and change our plane reservations around, beg the airlines not to charge the plane fees. I lost it on the phone with this poor woman. I blurted out that I am going back for my dads funeral and now it is also my uncles. I am sure the people on the other end of the call have psychology classes with everything they hear.

I feel spent, wrung out, and that I can’t get my footing under me. I feel like I was sorta getting a little back under me last spring and summer.  I felt like I was learning to hold the sad along with the happy that entered my life. But I gotta tell you, my dad, now my uncle, this darkness is weighing on me.  I have to fight everyday already.  The grief with Bells is this thing that looms, this vault that I carry working on keeping the lid on so that I can function. So that I can have the happy.  I feel like Dory from Finding Nemo, keep on swimming, but my arms are getting tired.

We leave on Thursday now, thanks to a potential nor’easter that was scheduled to end when we were supposed to land Thursday morning. And we are coming back later to accommodate going to my uncles funeral. The thing I am looking forward to is family. The reality is that when we are spread across the country like this, we come together for weddings and funerals. It will be good to hug everyone as we share this common thread of coming together to honor these amazing men.  I am lucky that I had them in my life.  I am also lucky to have people in my life to hold me, to be that support when my arms get tired. It is that love that buoys us up in the times we can’t see the light, that love that guides us to see that sunshine again.

My Uncle Vito and my dad