RedheadRev

Today I learned that my uncle, son of my grandma that just died, has also died. He died on Thanksgiving day. His neighbor found him with a gunshot wound. They think that he committed suicide. I am deeply saddened by this news. What makes it even harder is that he apparently had been doing very well lately. I have never known him not to be having problems with drugs and alcohol. Apparently, though, the past two years he has been free of that bondage. I am sad that I didn’t even know that. I’m also sad that I haven’t seen him in so long when he only lives an hour and a half or two hours away. Granted we’ve never been close and my dad has been dead for nearly 7 years (so we don’t do family get-togethers), but still…

He has two daughters. One is older than I am and one is 4 days younger than I am. I didn’t really know either of them very well. I met the older one maybe twice in my life and the younger one once. They have both gotten closer to my uncle in the past ten years. He was out of their lives for some time. And now he has grandkids. I just have to wonder what happened. If he was doing so well, what happened? What kind of pain was he going through, especially to have done this on Thanksgiving day just before he was going to be picked up to go celebrate with his family? These situations are so sad because they don’t make sense. It seems like the people around someone who has committed suicide should see the symptoms, but it is so rare that it is so obvious. I want to make clear that I’m not trying to blame anyone. It’s impossible to tell sometimes. Of course, maybe there was another person involved. That would make it less sad in this situation I think.

Oh, it makes me sad…

Thanks to Aunt Christine for the pictures. On top picture, my uncle Tom is the second youngest. The youngest is my dad. On the bottom picture, my uncle is the one in the bottom right-hand corner. My uncle Dick is in the bottom left-hand corner , my uncle John is two over from Dick and my aunt Christine is the one above my uncle Tom. This was before my dad went to school.

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dead, Family, suicide, thanksgiving, uncle