The day is November 15th, and I am in 7th grade. I’m called by my father who said he has loads of news, but that he wants it all to be said in person. “Referring to what?” I question him. “Jimmy.” He answers sorrowfully. Immediately I am aware that this is it, seeing as my uncle Jimmy had sadly relapsed with the worlds most dreaded disease. Any call that had to do with him at this time was not good, in fact it was opposite of good; it was downright bad. His bones were as weak as noodles, he was so skinny that if I saw him in Auschwitz I wouldn’t think twice, and he couldn’t swallow his spit. Swallowing his spit hurt his throat so bad, and it took so much energy that he didn’t have. To see him in this condition was absolutely horrifying. He was once a man filled with happiness, he weighed close to if not 300 pounds, and had kind eyes. He was now drowning in his own spit and being fed through his stomach, clearly you can see the difference, but his smile was always the same.
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In the car with my father I watch as tears suffocate his face, keep in mind I had never seen him cry a single tear before this day. He explains to me the most basic yet hardest words he’ll ever utter, “He’s not going to make it.” The words whip around my head, inside it feels like I’ve been stabbed in the heart. It’s like you’re in a dream, like it’s all a story and the ending is going to turn out good. You keep telling yourself, maybe they’ll fix him, maybe he won’t have to die. Then you realize how bad he’s gotten, he can’t even eat food by himself. I shove my thoughts out of my head as fast as I can but they still linger in the darkest spots, they even do today. When I try to see his face, sometimes I see how he was when he was healthy and happy, but other times the darkness takes over my brain and shoves the sight of him in a cold hospital bed in my head instead. Sometimes it shows the sight of him in a box of ashes too, I’m lucky to have the memories of just him smiling.

“I’m not ready to lose my brother,” my dad tells me between hiccups. My father and my uncle were always close because they would hunt together, fish together, and just generally spend time together. As a child my dad was sometimes picked on for being so small, and before he could stick up for himself (beat other kids up), my rugged uncle would always be there to silence the kids with his fist or even just a threat. Nobody wanted to fight my uncle, except cancer.

We get out of the car and immediately the brisk November air surrounds me and flows into my nose, the temperature change hurts the inside of my nose but that’s the last thought on my mind. We make our way inside the hospital doors in silence, silence really is louder than words. We say hello to the nice receptionist, for me it’s hard to even find the courage to be nice to somebody. I’m spending too much of that courage trying not to cry. My dad knows what exact floor and room number my uncle is in and we load into the elevator. It smells disgusting, the memorable ‘hospital smell’ that everybody who has a sick relative or is sick themselves knows. The silence becomes overbearing, but what is there to say?

We walk into his hospital room, it is filled with family. My aunt Linda (my uncle Jimmy’s wife), my aunt Rose, my cousins Nick and Angie, along with Angie’s sons Nick and Nathan. The silence follows me in. My uncle grins a handsome smile as we walk in, and my dad smiles back. Every smile in this room is fake, nobody is happy. NCIS buzzes from the TV, that was my uncles favorite show. He tells us that now that everyone is here, he has some things to tell us.

“As you all know, I’ve had cancer for a while now,” he starts, “I’m really suffering with it.” I look at my aunt Linda and see nothing but deep sadness and exhaustion. How could it feel to spend your life with a man you’ve known for so long, and now see him suffer so bad and have no way to help him? “So I have decided that with the help of the hospital I’m choosing a solution to my pain.” He is looking at everyone, I am looking at no one. My stomach is sick. “I will be given a certain amount of medicine everyday, and each day the dose will go up, until ultimately I will feel no more pain.” I look at his face, I see a life full of laughs, I see a life full of tears. I see a man who became sad enough at one point to hide behind the face of alcohol. I see a man strong enough to get off his knees and throw the bottles away. I see a man brave enough to never open a can again. I look at my hands. To read about sadness, and hear about it even; you will still never be able to think into the emptiness I felt. The emptiness that will never actually be filled, once you lose how whole you were (especially when it has to do with the death of a loved one) you will never feel whole again. After he stops explaining how his life will end, it is completely quiet. There is no questions, it was pretty clear. Finally the silence breaks, and we all reminisce on funny stories we have of my uncle.

As I go to say goodbye (more of a see you tomorrow type thing) my uncle grabs my hand in his soft hands, and smiles at me. I feel my face become very hot and I feel my eyes water, but the last thing I want is for my uncle to think I’m sad because of him; as if it’s his fault. He looks me in the eyes and kindly tells me, “I’m always in your heart.”

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The last day I am able to see my uncle is 5 hours before his death. I walked into the hospital room with my dad and I don’t look at anybody else except Jimmy. He is on life support because he can’t breath on his own, and I can physically see the machine pumping the air in and out of his lungs. To look at someone with such an important life not be there anymore, it’s petrifying. To see what cancer can do to your body, it’s petrifying. To see what cancer did to my uncle, it’s outraging.

The nurse comes into my uncle’s hospital room and tells us that he has 3 more hours to live, or that’s their ‘expected time’. She said it in such a cheerful way, it makes my stomach go into knots to this day. The only thing that brings me back to being okay is realizing that my uncle wouldn’t want me to be so mad at such a small thing, he would want me to live my life in peace, and maybe to live it longer than his. Except, if I could live even half the beautiful life my uncle did, I’d be happy. It was beautiful because he made it beautiful, regardless of the situation. If I had a camera ready to take the picture as we all huddled around my uncles body, hoping to have some last glimpses of a face we’ll never see in person again, I wouldn’t take the picture.

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Almost 5 years later, I huddle in for a picture with my beautiful family. We laugh at a joke that someone snipes our way and the camera flashes. It captures my father, my aunt, my uncle, my cousins, and I all at my father's wedding. The happiness is so real, and the day is so beautiful. The sky is so blue. No matter what anybody says, I know Jimmy was huddled in with us. After all, he’s always in my heart.