My uncle died on the night of Sep­tem­ber 8^th.

I didn’t know him as well as I would have liked. He was a grab-a-meal-once-each-vis­it-to-my-mom type of con­nec­tion. (Who her­self is a once-a-year and month­ly-ish calls kind of con­nec­tion.) So it hit me… then my ner­vous sys­tem set­tled from that blood pres­sure spike and total dys­reg­u­la­tion, and set­tled into the longer work of grief. 

There IS grief—mostly about those left behind. My mor­tal­i­ty has been rid­ing shot­gun since can­cer, so these things don’t sur­prise me, but it is still sad. My moth­er enjoyed hav­ing him in her life—that’s WHY she moved to Texas six­teen years ago. I think I feel the most about all this when I think about what she’s about to go through. I also think about how she has the same degen­er­a­tive lung dis­ease and is a year or two behind where he was in its pro­gres­sion.

Most­ly, I think about dis­tant mem­o­ries. Before my grand­fa­ther died, I saw my uncle a lot more often. My mem­o­ries of a much younger man being patient and lov­ing with his wall-bounc­ing ADHD (“hyper­ac­tive,” they called it back then) nephew were among my ear­li­est. I didn’t appre­ci­ate the patience then, but I get it now. 

But my fam­i­ly is sto­ic. Not detached, but just rarely sen­ti­men­tal. We know we’re there. There’s no need to vis­it every hol­i­day. Our con­nec­tions were always stronger in calm silence. The meal was enough. They said, “You live far away, but you’re impor­tant.” And that was true in both direc­tions. 

He knew he was dying. Not like we’re all dying or even some­one with the last stages of COPD is dying, but like some­one who might bet­ter mea­sure their remain­ing time in days instead of weeks or months. I’m not sure the peo­ple around him were lis­ten­ing, but it sound­ed like he knew. He didn’t want to eat. He watched his O2 num­bers crash while doing every­day things. I hope it was gen­tle and he wasn’t scared.

I have a des­per­ate­ly small family—especially since my bio-dad wasn’t on the scene and my step-dad shat the bed. There’s Mom. One uncle (the one I’m talk­ing about) and his wife. And a cousin whom I see maybe twice a decade. That’s real­ly about it. Most of my “fam­i­ly” has always been cho­sen, and my cir­cle close. Peo­ple with big fam­i­lies and wide nets often don’t under­stand what a big deal it is when some­one with a tiny fam­i­ly tru­ly invites some­one in.

He was a Texas Demo­c­rat who real­ly LISTENED to my social jus­tice stuff and took it in. He read my end­less social media rant­i­ngs. Fem­i­nism (but no SWERF and TERF). Ableism. All the ‑isms. He was curi­ous in a way that most peo­ple play at, but few actu­al­ly achieve—hungry to under­stand peo­ple and life and THEIR expe­ri­ences. But per­haps most impor­tant­ly, hun­gry to fig­ure out how to do bet­ter by the world, and he knew that to do that, he couldn’t imag­ine for a moment that he had all the answers already. He could have been a typ­i­cal Texas neolib cen­trist who thought sup­port­ing the DNC was fight­ing the good fight and told his pinko nephew from Cal­i­for­nia to “shut your woke face, now is not the time,” but he nev­er was. He evolved. He grew. He was a bet­ter, more social­ly pro­gres­sive per­son in his 70s than most peo­ple I know half his age with sim­i­lar left lean­ings.

In many ways, he was the prog­en­i­tor of who I became as a human. I see a lot of myself in him and who he was. If there’s a part of me that believes mas­culin­i­ty can be nur­tur­ing, lov­ing, kind, sen­si­tive, and com­pas­sion­ate, I owe no small part of it to him. Lots of emo­tion­al labor for his fam­i­ly. Lots of com­pas­sion. Lots of gen­tle­ness. A calm will­ing­ness to lis­ten with­out judge­ment. I was too young to under­stand how behav­ior mod­el­ing worked, and his exam­ple, but he showed me mas­culin­i­ty could be kind, artis­tic, and vul­ner­a­ble. He might not have real­ized it, and I cer­tain­ly didn’t, but between him and my grand­fa­ther, I think I learned more about a non-tox­ic ver­sion of mas­culin­i­ty from them than any oth­er men. (My step-father arrived on the scene after most of those for­ma­tive mem­o­ries were already uploaded to the moth­er­ship.)

He was not a per­fect human. But he was GOOD. And good in a way that those who sur­vive him will lov­ing­ly smudge the rough edges away and leave his mem­o­ry bur­nished. At least I will. 

We are dimin­ished.