Shit Happens

Yesterday morning I found out that one of my uncles had stage 4 pancreatic cancer and had but a few days left to live. Shocking since less than a month ago he was celebrating his 25th anniversary as a priest. Full of life, full of cheer.

Now there are two ways to look at this.

The first would be to thank God for the time He allowed His son to be with us here on Earth. After all, my uncle did live a beautiful life. He was a missionary priest in Africa before returning here due to illness. And what better way to thank God than to try to emulate the life of my uncle, his kindness, humility and charity.

The other way is to think that God has a strange sense of humor and that He loves to torment us by doing stuff like this (extreme happiness one moment then extreme sadness the next). I mean, my uncle JUST CELEBRATED 25 YEARS OF PRIESTHOOD LESS THAN A MONTH AGO and now he's dying?!? What the fuck, God? Why?

Me, I choose to do the first. Not because it's the Christian thing to do. Not because it's a sin to think the second one. But because if my uncle were in my shoes he'd do the first. No bitterness, no hate. Just kindness.

My uncle and I were never close. We rarely see each other but the past few times we did see each other I always felt so light inside. Being near him made me feel calm. And I always wanted to have a long chat with him about my beliefs, maybe just so I could get a clearer understanding of God. Guess that won't happen now.

I was even the photographer at his anniversary. And, sounding redundant, its not even one month past and he's on his deathbed? C'mon.

On a darker note, last night I also found out that the father of my mother's cousin (who I think was also her godfather) passed away for as yet undiscovered reasons. They just found him on the floor of his garage in the US.

So... Why is this happening? All I've been hearing about lately is death. Whether its people I'm close to (relatives) or people I see on TV (Eddie Guerrero, Jason Collier, Michael Park) people are dying. Because what? In the span of this year alone I've experienced more deaths than last year. This can't be the law of averages.

If this is part of growing up, then I want...

OUT.