The holidays make me sad and melancholy. I miss my Uncle…I really miss my Dad. When I was in 5th grade my brother Eric was diagnosed with Leukemia and it forever changed my viewpoint on Christmas. It happened on December 18. It slanted Christmas really bad that year. We had no Christmas. Our tree stayed up for 3 months and we celebrated in March and my sister and I were shuffled off to live with my grandparents for a year. It sucked. On Christmas day my dad walked us into the bedroom and told us to pick out a present. They were wrapped and lined up and I was old enough to know there was no Santa, but talk about sad. Me and my sister looked at each other and at the solemn looking piles of presents and we both decided we didn’t want anything but our brother to come home. I was 10 years old that year. My brother is now 28 years old and very healthy.

When I was 15 my 26 year old Uncle David, for whom I idolized…. Well let me set up some history…

When I was 8 years old he was 18 and he joined the Marines to get out of our small town and I remember crying when he said he was going to the service. He was the only family member that was always in my corner. When I was 4 years old he taught me my ABC’s when my sister was 5 and in kindergarten and struggling to learn. I remember reciting the ABC’s with a big cheesy proud smile on my face as my Uncle stood in the corner rooting me on. My sister broke down in hysterics because she was the one that needed to learn and I was only 4 years old and I knew my ABC’s and she didn’t. It was my one crowning moment of one-upmanship over my sister.

For 7 years my Uncle wrote me letters. He spoke to me when I was a child as though I was an adult. I recall one time being disappointed in something he did. And he told me that his actions were the actions of an imperfect person and that he was simply trying to live his life for himself. The lessons I learned from those letters, which I incidentally still have…have remained with me for life. Every few years I go back and read those letters and am again reminded of why I loved him so.

My Uncle left the service the year I turned 15. I was so excited. I was going to have him around. He moved to MD and I was living in PA and I saw him every weekend for 6 months. I loved it. He got a job operating a backhoe for a construction company in MD.

On December 11, 1985 he went to work sick with a cold. It was raining and they were removing large trees from muddy earth to build a mall. He was lifting large tree trunk pieces etc and his backhoe slid into a hole from one of the places where the trunks had been removed and the backhoe tipped. He jumped from the backhoe in an attempt to leave the backhoe and save himself. The side he jumped from was the same direction in which the backhoe fell. The weight of the backhoe hit him in the chest and stopped his heart, he was crushed and died instantly. There were other workers on the scene that saw the entire thing happen. He was 26 years old, had just moved back near enough to home that we could all see him. He had just asked a woman to marry him. He was just finding contentment.

That day when I came home from school my mother gathered us around to tell us and I fell to the floor of the basement and cried and I’ve never been the same. I truly learned what loss was and in a deep way. He was the family member that mattered to me. That listened to me.

I remember when my grandmother (his mom) went to MD to retrieve his belongings there was an overnight bag in his car as this happened on a Friday and he was planning to drive home that night after work. She unzipped the bag and on the very top was a brand new black t-shirt with the tags still on it and words printed in white

“Only the Good Die Young”

Achin’ to enjoy Christmas again…