Uncle Bill

My Uncle Bill’s dying. He has brain cancer. I guess he’s known about it for awhile but didn’t say anything until he had a stroke a couple weeks ago. The doctor said he only has 2-weeks, and that was 2-weeks ago. Recently, my mom, my grandmother, and her brother, Un-Chuck, went to San Francisco to see him for the last time. That is, my Uncle Bill was visited in the hospital, one last time, by his sister, his mother, and his uncle, and all parties new it would be the last time they would ever all be together because one of them was going to be dead in a few days.

It must’ve been weird.

I wonder what they talked about. I wonder if it felt like if it was the end and everything was consequential or if it was boring and frivolous and seemed to go on longer than it needed to like most family get-togethers, or really like most human interactions. The worst part is that he didn’t die while they were there. They said their goodbyes and got a plane and he stayed there waiting to die by himself.

I could probably count on both hands the number of times I remember seeing my Uncle. He’s a total weirdo, and not in the fun jokey Bill Murray way. More in the Todd Solondz character way, which makes me uncomfortable because Uncle Bill and I look a lot alike. I saw a picture of him right before he shipped off to Vietnam and he looked exactly like me. It makes me uncomfortable because I sometimes feel about myself the way I feel about him. Or I atleast believe that people see in me what I see in him, which is just a disconcerting loner. A guy that does unexplained things and is so far gone into himself, the most simple human interactions come off as clanky and uneasy. He lies a lot and it’s painfully obvious, and when I lie, I feel like it’s being perceived the same way. When people aren’t calling me out on my untruth, it’s not because I’m so good at misleading them, it’s because they pity me like I pity him.

UPDATE: Uncle Bill's dead