My great uncle is dying.

I just call him Uncle. I don't want any confusion. He's been put into hospice. It's not that I didn't see this coming with problem after problem coming up. He has surgery. He breaks his hip 24 hours later. The heart isn't recovering well from surgery. He goes into respiratory arrest and is revived. He's on a trachea to keep him breathing and has difficulty communicating. This may not be a big deal, but for such an intelligent man it is infuriating. Then he gets an infection in his lungs and has to be quarantined. What was once a predicted to be a few weeks on a trachea turns into months. And so on and so on. Now I suppose he's letting go. All of this crap will finally be over with. Perhaps I should be happy for him. Part of me expected this, but the other part held on to the hope that he would fight through this. He had already survived what would have killed most men his age. Oh well.

I wish he had gotten to go to Washington. There was a program in the area going on in the area to send veterans WWII to DC to see the new memorial and honor them before they all die. Uncle received many medals and was incredibly important to his marines in WWII. He was scheduled to go this spring. 

I wonder how my mother is taking this. He was there for her in the worst of times. During college when my grandfather was drinking, my grandma was crazy, and they were in the midst of a nasty divorce my mom lived with Uncle. When she went "home" from college she went to Uncle's. She calls him Uncle as well, that's probably where I got it from. She's been up to visit him constantly since he was hospitalized. It didn't matter that it was at least a three hour trip and she had to work the next day. She made the round trip in one day just to see him. 

The first time I visited him in the hospital he was still fairly lucid, although couldn't talk. We had to read his lips. One of the first things he asked us was if Faye was coming. Faye is my grandmother and his only living sister. My mom had previously told my uncle that she was back to the angry, paranoid woman she was twenty years before. He seemed to have forgotten and thought she was still sane. I felt so bad. He's asked for her several times since then. He's even thought my mom's cousin Judy WAS Faye in his less lucid moments. I wish she could see him. She'll never forgive herself if she ever comes out of this and realizes she didn't say good bye to her brother, or see him when he was in the hospital. I don't want to be angry with her because I know she can't control her state of mind right now. Sometimes it's hard though. I may tell what I know of his story in a later post, it'll be slightly more uplifting. He truly is one of the most interesting and intelligent men I have ever met.