So last week I get up, check my e-mail and I find out that my uncle, my mother’s brother has died.

After a couple of hours I find myself pottering around the house, as if the empty feeling didn’t happen.. the memories rushing in never were and everything in the world, was as it should.

And that is not right.

I know that life goes on, but living away from your family and childhood friends, makes loss easier at first, but so much harder in the long run.

There is no closure, because you don’t live through the realisation of someone not being there. You don’t get to say goodbye.. you don’t get mindlessly drunk on the night of the funeral trying to ease the pain.

Two years ago I lost my beloved aunt (my mom’s sister), who essentially was my mom along with my mom.. a year ago I lost Art, my amazing first ever dog who was living in the country with my mom.. this year, it seems I lost my uncle (my mom’s brother).

And it feels OK at first.. you are not present so the details get lost on you.. You get sad, you cry, but the reality is that they are not part of your every day life.

And when you realise it months down the line it is worse, because the guilt just grips your heart and breaks you down.

The worst thing is when you return to the scenery where you are used to living with the people/creatures you have lost and you have to interact with that environment without them. Everyone else has come to terms with the loss, but you are kinda left in a limbo…

I went last June to stay at my aunt’s apartment, as I always did.. as I had been for years and years.. and I couldn’t. Her presence was gone, yet the way things were placed in the apartment was hers. I felt this surge of pain and guilt and fear.

I went to the kitchen and I tried to make myself a tea and opening the cupboard, seeing her handwriting on jars with spices just reminded me I wasn’t here to say goodbye. So I took the easy way out and went and stayed at a hotel for the days I was in town..

Later on that week back home, I was tidying up at my mom’s, I picked up my dog’s first adult collar, a green, discoloured, ragged little thing after ten years of wear and I threw it away angrily because I wasn’t there to hold him when he died and tell him not to be afraid. Now I feel guilty for not holding on to it.

Right now I am finding it hard to call my mom and my aunt (who just lost her husband, my uncle, my mother’s brother) and to say anything. What do you say when you are on the other end of the world and you relive memories and you try so hard to hold on to the memory of the voice; a voice that is no longer there, and you won’t hear again. How do you deal with loosing something that is no longer yours?

Book of the moment:

Heaven knows I’m Miserable Now by Andre Jordan (courtesy of my lovely hubby who bought it last night to make me feel a bit better)