The Weight Grief Leaves Behind

 I am not doing very well right now.
People say that it's just an uncle, an uncle isn't like your mom or your dad.
But, I never had a dad.

I know that I didn't have Uncle in my life steadily until I guess middle school.
He was in the Army, and we only saw him every now and then when he got leave.

Once he retired from the Army, and he came home for good-he was there with me all the time.
He taught me to cook, he realized I was blind as a bat, and took me to get glasses, he held my hand when I got my ears pierced.
He walked me down the aisle, and he stepped in as a grandpa to my kids.

In every way but biologically, he was my dad.

And it hurts to lose him.

I'm also dealing with guilt because our visits to see him had grown longer between times.
I had even stopped texting him as often as I once did.
Life just happened-and I guess Uncle got forgotten a bit.

You can make up every excuse in the world, but it doesn't excuse you from letting family slip into the cracks of your life.

With Uncle's passing, there isn't anyone left to laugh about the time I lost my bikini in the ocean at Panama City Beach.
 Or the time we stopped at a very risqué motel—one that was used for prostitution because it was super cheap—and he told me and Aunt GG not to leave our rooms for anything, anything, and to keep a dresser against the door.
There isn't anyone left who remembers my Mom.
Yeah, we still have Hippie Aunt, but she moved away when she was very young.
Uncle and Mom shared a house.
The two unmarried siblings.

There hasn't been a time-a world-that Uncle wasn't just a text away from me.
I always knew, come push or shove, I could go home again-and Uncle would be there.

Now I no longer have a home to go back to-and Uncle is gone.

I don't have the words to even start explaining how empty I feel-how lost I feel.
How unmoored I feel.