There’s so much death surrounding me. Most notably I found out my uncle had cancer.

Four days later he was gone.

Yes, you read that right. Four days from diagnosis to death.

He was a really great guy and, even though we weren’t related by blood, when he married my aunt he definitely became family. Nothing can take that away. Not even death.

He lived in Alaska and I haven’t seen him in a long time. He loved Alaska. He always spoke of it beautifully and I meant to go visit him there one of these days. I put it off too long.

He frequently commented on my Facebook updates and I could always count on a couple cheesy email forwards from him on a regular basis. They never annoyed me though, I enjoyed the silliness or the ridiculousness even if I never forwarded them on to anyone else. He was the only one I knew who forwarded those kinds of things on still.

I’m going to miss those stupid emails.

I’m going to miss him a lot. Even if I didn’t see him much he was very much a part of my life. The internet is awesome like that.

In memory of him I’m posting an incredibly embarrassing picture of myself with him. Because this is how I’ll always remember him.

This was him, my baby sister, me and his beautiful wolf  Tawny.

Okay take a minute, we’ll acknowledge. Oh god, the shorts! the bangs! the awkward smile! So much going on here. It was 1996 y’all.

Moving on.

I feel completely blindsided by this. Like, knocked over, could puke, blown away, out of my mind that someone can get taken away this fast. It makes no sense.

I’m happy that he didn’t suffer for a long time though. According to his daughter he passed away peacefully and in no pain. Really that’s better than the long drawn out awfulness that cancer can be.

Still, I wish he didn’t have to go at all. I feel robbed. I’m mad at myself for not seizing the moment and taking a trip up to Alaska to visit him. I will go to Alaska one of these days but it would have been better to have someone that I love and who loves the state show me around.

Since I couldn’t be there to say goodbye this will have to do. He is already very, very missed.