This is one reason why it’s great to have a blog.¬† A few months ago, I found out my uncle Keith had died.¬† He was my age, or just a year older, and we were more like friends than uncle and niece.¬† He was an odd duck, nicknamed “Rass” by my departed grandmother, a severe alcoholic, and called Rass by all of us until he reached adulthood, when it was abandoned for his real name, Keith Sellers.¬† He was a troubled soul, no doubt about it.¬† They didn’t call him Rass for nothing.¬† Named after Rasputin, Keith could be a real renegade and tyrant.¬† He wasn’t so much mean as he was without filters or boundaries.¬† He would say whatever he felt like saying and didn’t feel like softening it for anyone.¬† Life got really hard for him in his last days.
He was only 45 when he died.¬† He died in his sleep.¬† Or so they say.¬† But he left a very strange last update on Facebook about being lied to by someone he thought loved him.¬† He was living in his car.¬† He died on someone’s couch.¬† These are details of his death.¬† The details of his life weren’t much better.¬† This past summer we had to talk him down from suicide.¬† He had thought things through and decided this life wasn’t worth living.¬† Funny thing about life – it can really seem like a drag if you don’t have a reason to live.¬† Some of us have our children to keep us trying to live as long as possible.¬† Some of us have our religion.¬† Not me, but others of you out there, I’m sure.¬† Some of us have an undeniable desire to survive because we’re hard-wired that way.¬† But if you have no kids and you keep losing your job, you have no money and you basically have no one in this world who loves you — what have you got?
But what’s weird is that Facebook, I think, gives us a false sense of community.¬† Yes, we are in touch with each other but what does that mean really?¬† When he died, his identity, or avatar, lingered on Facebook – still lingers.¬† His emails are still in my mail app.¬† I can find comments of his from Facebook.¬† He was a scary friend to have because he said anything he felt like, even if it wasn’t “PC,” especially if it wasn’t “PC.”
Even now, when I write something I expect one of his snarky replies.¬† It is almost as if we have gotten in a fight and are ignoring each other via social networking.¬† But no, he is gone.¬† His real life body gone and burned to ash.¬† We aren’t really so capable of understanding the complexities of this new dimension of relating to each other.¬† We try, but what does it all mean?¬† Anyway, I miss him.
Here we are as kids. Me in the orange shirt, Keith in the blue.
We did get in a fight a few times before he died.¬† One, he had posted a really seriously hideous photo of me and had tagged it.¬† Since I have a lot of followers of people I don’t know, naturally it felt invasive.¬† It was a real low point for me anyway, after a terrible breakup.¬† I had gained too much weight and couldn’t even bear to look at the photo, let alone have it on Facebook for all of my 500 and something friends to see.¬† I told him to untag it.¬† He refused.¬† I asked him to take it down. He refused.¬† So I defriended him.¬† After a while, I refriended him but he never put the photo back up.¬† I wish I wasn’t so weak of mind and soul sometimes.¬† But I am, Blanche, I am.
His doctor had told him he only had a very short time to live and that he could die at any time.¬† He didn’t really take care of himself.¬† He was jobless – always getting fired for saying mean things to people — and homeless; he was sleeping in his car.¬† He died on a friend’s couch.
