All About Me

I hate making this all about me but that's where my brain keeps going back. My mom just called me about an hour ago to tell me that my uncle had passed. At first, not a tear, and I wasn't expecting that.

I want to cry for him but when the tears started, it was all about me. My aunt and uncle didn't seem to have such a great marriage, until later on, after the kids were out. They did everything together and flirted and talked about their sex life like they were teenagers. They had their til death do us part. I want that.

And then it really came back to all about me. This could be my "next time." I take for granted that I beat cancer twice already. But did I? Does anyone really beat it or do we just spend the rest of our lives waiting for it to come back? Cancer kills. It may not have killed me yet, but it killed him. What happens when there's no more body parts left to remove through surgery? My chemo was preventative, what if I needed it to save me? It didn't save him.

And they're looking at me now. My mother told me how she's so grateful and gives prayers of thanks to G-d that I survived this, especially after seeing him last week. I fear his family will look at me and wonder why I'm still here and he's not. I don't want anyone looking at me.

But I need to be there and show my aunt and cousins that I'm with them, that I'm just like them, saying goodbye to a family member whom we lost to Cancer. And I need for a moment to be about him and about them and not show them the tears of what this means to me.