24 or so unusual hours

If you have a particular outlook on the world and on life, you can divide days roughly into the categories of mundane, peculiar, quite peculiar, and most peculiar. If it seems to you like I'm reaching for unusual words to describe things you would be correct. I've just tired of using words like "weird" and "bizarre." Yesterday was most peculiar.

My original spring break plan was to go to D.C. to do Washington things and then to North Carolina to visit friends. But I realized a few weeks ago that I was too wiped out to do that and needed to lie on a beach. So that was the plan, and I kind of coasted through my last day of school. And during my last class I got an email saying that my not quite 103 year-old uncle Mike, who resides in Sacramento, was in his final days. I wasn't sure what to do, but by the time evening rolled around (how do times of day 'roll around?' and what does that even mean?) I decided I had to be there.

Keep in mind that I was in no shape to be doing this, but somehow I was doing this. So I first endured this very long flight.  It's very hard to get to Sacramento, considering it's the capital of a very large state. I'm not sure if it's hard to get to because there's no particular reason to go of if people rarely go there because it's hard to do, but I got in at 10:30 Pacific (1:30 Eastern) having not had dinner. The rental car agent pointed me to a nearby In-and-Out Burger so I had a burger and fries at the equivalent of 2 AM.

I got to the motel and saw a note that they were doing roof work, so I respectfully requested to not be on the top floor. This lead me to be placed in what they call an "accessible room." Everything is set up for handicapped people, so the good part is that there's a bench in the shower (always a bonus) and the bad part is that the bathroom has to be huge to accommodate a wheelchair, so the rest of the room is tiny. But I slept.

And in the morning I had the lovely breakfast that they offer at a Best Western Plus (by the way, the math teachers among us know that "plus" implies something more. Ain't seeing it here- I suppose one could be adding a negative...) and then went for a walk by the American River. That was all quite lovely. I had lots of thoughts that I believed I had recorded, but they seem to have been disappeared by my phone. Anyway, here's what happened.

After my walk I went to the house and was filled with memories of joy and love and all sorts of emotional complications over the years. I don't see my cousins nearly as often as I'd like because it's far (I had written a lot about this yesterday but my phone seems to have dropped it somehow) but they are my only really close extended family. We saw each other regularly as kids and less regularly as adults, but we've always been bonded in a way that's rare in my family.

I came in and sat with my cousins and uncle (I'm going to limit this to my own experiences as a matter of privacy for others). It felt really good to be there. I held my uncle's hand and spoke to him, and though he was mostly unresponsive, I'll believe that he knew I was there. I then was informed that because this was his 103rd birthday, that there was a party planned and that most of the people coming did not know his status. So I, along with my once-removed younger cousins, dealt with the caterer and ran to the store to get supplies and such.

I knew this was going to be strange and possibly quite awkward, but I did what I could. It was nice to spend the time with family. My uncle had a very large circle of friends and over the course of the afternoon, many of them came by to celebrate him. They were disappointed that he couldn't participate, but after the difficult part of "where's Mike?" they were still glad to be part of things. I'll write more about my uncle later, but if you live 103 years and genuinely care about people you make many unbreakable connections.

People stayed for a while. I was kind of floating in time and wasn't completely aware of everything going on, but it was a happy occasion. There was singing and story-telling and just the nice dynamic of people who have no connection with each other besides their knowing the same person getting to hear other sides of someone they cared about. My uncle was both very private and very public, so many people knew him in many different ways- neighbors, colleagues, friends from all aspects of his life.

I wish I could say that I was able to fully engage with all of this and I tried, but I didn't know any of these people nor they me and it was ultimately beyond my capacity. So eventually I had to step away for a little while. Fortunately, I had the good fortune to have the company of my brother and the husband of one of my cousins and a couple of the younger cousins. It was a separate but equally warm and caring time that I will always cherish.

Eventually the party dissipated and I went back to his room and spend some time with my close cousins and my uncle. Everyone seemed very happy about the way things had gone, even if they weren't a part of the actual goings on. We talked quietly and I held my uncle's hand for a while and talked about the past and the future. He seemed very at peace as I left, and I left thinking he was in a good place.

I went back to my crappy motel and promptly fell asleep.

More to come...