Donald Bagger 2014

Tuesday morning, my sister called me to tell me that my uncle had died.

I am sitting here at the end of Wednesday knowing that I need to write to get this processed in some way, but not knowing what to say exactly. This was my mother’s brother, the only sibling that she had. He wasn’t a content in my life. He’s been estranged from various parts of the family off and on, usually of his own choosing. At the time of his death (which at this point, we think was two weeks ago) he was living in Green Bay. It all makes for a very disjointed story.

I found out about this on Tuesday, sometime between ten and eleven. My work day consisted of two IM shifts, one as coverage for someone else, one desk shift, and a faculty meeting I was to present at. The end of the day was a dinner party for the post-doc in my former lab before she flies back to Japan. None of these things I could find an immediate solution for without having to go into detail about the circumstance. I didn’t trust myself to say anything to my colleagues and be able to keep myself under emotional control. So I decided to just stuff it down for the day, get the work done, see off my friend, and get home. This morning I decided that I could get the important work done from home. And then take the day to regroup and call my mother.

The day ended up being a marathon of phone calls. One call to my sister, and one from, one call to my mother, one from my father. I’m glad I stayed home. There seems to be no one in my uncles life that lays claim to him or his belongings. What we know he owns right now is a pile of movies. We don’t know what friends he has as everyone who has contacted us are people who knew him five years ago or more. We know he died at his apartment. He was diabetic, and that likely was a contributing factor, but I think cause of death is currently listed as “unknown.”

My mother and her brother had issues. Some I knew as my mother isn’t shy about sharing. But he is family and for her own peace of mind she is taking care of the arrangements. My call to her was filled with expected emotional outbursts and a more significant rehashing of old prejudices and conflicts, albeit tempered. My remembrances of him are mostly from younger ages. He was around for some holidays and a few times in between. I remember a trip to Chicago as a very sullen teenager, that ended up with all of our family closing down a piano bar. I remember he had a catering business at one point, that ran off some of the old family recipes. I also remember him hand coding the Star Trek game to run off the TI-64 with my grandfather. I remember the moments of tension that would rise and fall when the subject of his sexuality came up, and then the family would go back to drinking cocktails, playing card games, and reminiscing over previous decades.

I loved him and always got along well with him. At times we shared a similar sharpness and dark sense of humor that we both used  to cope with family. Already family is starting to speculate on the last few Facebook posts from years ago on the darkness that he might have been experiencing. He was prone to drama, as all of that side did. And it would be easy to discount those ramblings as part of it. But there is the possibility that the darkness overtook his life. That the manifestation of it forced him to keep withdrawing from those he knew. That despair over losing his partner, the constantness of diabetes he developed late in life, and the harassing litigation from a car accident, maybe all became too much to see through. We know very little about how he lived, but the fact that he appears to have few possessions, fewer friends hints at despondency.

I don’t know how I feel about this yet. This being his death in general. There is the pervasive idea that death has an order, and the fact that I still have grandparents living means that this particular death did not happen on its appointed schedule. Absurd, but common thought. This being that I was close to him, but at the same time not. I have memories of him that don’t match to the ending picture that we are receiving. There is a gap there that I doubt will ever be filled. Since, I found out there are times when I am weepy and it feels strange because I can’t remember when I saw him or spoke to him last. This being that this is an end. I won’t have the chance to talk to him again, or share a joke about family, or make another memory of any kind. This will be my last memory of him.

Death creates a vacancy. Naively, I only expected this vacancy with closer relatives: my parents, my sister, my grandparents, eventually my husband, or God forbid, my children. My uncles death, this one from such an inconsistent presence, is a more subtle vacancy. I didn’t realize that despite our distance, I still held a place for him somewhere out in the world. My understanding of what happens beyond me in cities that are not here, contained him. And now in a strange way, the town of Green Bay, where I have never been, has a little hole in it. And it always will.

And now I do too.