Too early

 I had several different posts planned. This one wasn't even a plan. It's more of a necessity for myself. 

Early Sunday morning November 29, 2020 my Uncle Dave passed away after a battle with cancer. The news was shocking. We knew it was terminal but to face the reality that a soul has left this earth too early (but early any death is too early). That the face you know so well will never be seen again this side of heaven is something you feel in the deepest parts of your being. 

Dave Carell was not biologically my uncle. He and my parents became friends in high school. The best of friends. It wasn't until I was much older that I realized this man was not my dad's brother. Weird. He was always just Uncle Dave. The guy who showed up in the most random times (or at least in my memories). We'd come home and there he was. Sitting at the kitchen table, drinking coffee. Occasionally he'd had a deer hanging up in the shed out back. It was from him and my dad that a learned how hunting dogs and herding dogs were made with different purposes, after our border collie tried to eat his prized deer. He also taught me that you don't have to be blood to love like family. 

Dave always made me (and my siblings) feel so loved. That we mattered. That our lives were important to him. He was always genuinely curious about what was going on in our lives. What sports were we playing, how band was going, if there were any boys/girls we were interested in. He cared. He loved. He was also the first to make fun of us for something. He loved to tease. It was almost always followed by a hug or a gentle shove. The first time he saw a picture of Levi his response was and I quote "Shaggy? You are dating shaggy from Scooby-Doo? Aw, kid you can do better." He then followed up with making fun of Levi's last name, which I refuse to repeat. When he found out we were getting married it was support, aside from comments about us being crazy. He was there for it. 

He was also so very present after Rory died. With all the love. All the tears. He held us all while we mourned the loss of our brother. Now we mourn the loss of the man himself. Many mourn a man I didn't know. Aside of him I didn't get to see because I didn't have that relationship with him. That is the thing about loss. We all loss the same human but to each of us a different person. A different relationship. Some lost a father, a friend, a best friend, a grandpa, etc. I lost a man who loved me when he didn't have to.

It never ends. This mourning. Grief. Loss. It's something we can plan on in life. That doesn't make it easier. It doesn't keep me from questioning why I open my heart. It hurts so much to have it broken. To know it will be broken again. But I lean on the words of C.S. Lewis 

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket-safe dark, motionless, airless- it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable." 

I don't want to be irredeemable. But today my heart is wrung. 

Always made me laugh