Weeks Like This…

It’s been a topsy-turvy week in a way. My uncle went in for surgery on Tuesday, was released on Wednesday and is now home recuperating. I’m so thankful he came through it okay and is on the mend. He’s in pain and will be miserable for a little bit. But he’s alive and that’s what matters.

My two uncles are my mom’s older brothers. They never married. Life just sort of got in the way and they never met the “right” ones. I wish they had because they are two of the greatest men I know. They would have made wonderful husbands and awesome dads.

As they are, they are the best uncles a girl could ask for. They live at home on the family farm, both retired. They golf every day in the summer and tend to a huge garden – the same garden that my grandma and grandpa tended so long ago. My Uncle Ted bakes a cake every weekend we come up to visit. I jokingly and lovingly refer to him as Teddy Crocker because he is such a good cook and baker. He has long white hair and a long white beard and looks like a cross between Kenny Rogers (when Kenny Rogers was young and still good looking) and Santa Claus. He’s the more quiet and reserved of the two and I’ve never heard him say a bad word about anyone. Uncle Tom is very tall with dark, curly hair, and has a devilish sense of humor. He is a tad gruff but beneath that gruffness, he’s quite sensitive. They both are.

Anyway, I can’t say enough about my uncles. They have always been there for me. They are two -oftentimes- cranky old guys but I know how sentimental they truly can be. They still have the cards I made them when I was very little, complete with the nickels and dimes I taped to the insides of the cards. They hold on to everything.  I didn’t know about the cards until a few years ago. It made me feel special to know they held on to that sort of thing. And watching them with my little girl is something special as well. They adore her and tease the living dickens out of her just as they teased me as I was growing up.

It’s hard watching my mom, uncles and friends age. I know they can’t live forever but I cannot bear the thought of them not being around. It’s something I really try not to think about. I don’t want to think about it or deal with it. Not now. Not if I don’t have to.

So when weeks like this – where someone I dearly love has to have surgery and is in pain – it cuts me to the quick. And until the immediate danger is over, I feel frozen and scared. I pray and I hope and I hold my breath until I get the okay that all is well or as well as it can be for the moment.

And then I can breathe again.

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