Rest in Peace

My Uncle Rick died this morning.  He called 911 at 4am, collapsed in the vestibule of his apartment building with blood coming from his mouth, and, in spite of the efforts of paramedics both on site and at the hospital, did not revive.  And like that a life is over.  Those are the facts, and, for the most part, the rest of it is a mystery.

That is not to say that it is a surprise, at least not entirely.  Sadly, we have been saying to each other for years that it would happen thus in the not-too-distant future .  He had COPD.  He hadn't had teeth for decades, having let them rot out of his head during what should have been the prime of adulthood.  He lived in such filth and squalor that no one was shocked that he would, from time to time, get random infections in various body parts.  He would fail to seek treatment for said infections until he could no longer walk or urinate or perform some other vital act.  It was not the first time he had called 911, not the first time for any of it, except it was the first time they couldn't bring him back.  That part, for some reason, feels shocking.  He was 58 years old but had been slowly killing himself through poor hygiene and abusive self-neglect so that he could easily have passed for someone 15-20 years older than that.  Although it's hard to really grasp the reality of it, there were multiple systems on the brink of failing, and it was just a matter of which would give out first.  To be sure, now that at least one of them has, we still aren't sure which.  Preliminarily, they are calling it cardiac arrest, but the pathologist can take his pick and we would just nod our heads.  Yep.  Shoulda seen that coming.  Shocking but not surprising.

And a mystery.  What was he thinking when he decided that he needed to call 911 for himself?  Did something suddenly change, or was it like the frog in the pot who, if put in there while the water is cool will not jump out until it's too late and the water is starting to boil around him?  Did he know he was about to die, or did he figure it would turn out like all the other times: with a hospital stay, someone to bring him food, medical staff to talk to, a few rounds of heavy-duty antibiotics, and maybe even some oxygen?

Even more unfathomable, though, is all the life that went before his death.  How does a person get so broken?  My memories of my uncle from when I was a very young child and he was in his early twenties blessedly color my perception of him in his middle age, or, as it turned out, his late years.  I was, I suspect, the closest thing he ever had to a beloved child.  He was a man who really enjoyed laughter.  He would rub his palms together or cross his arms around himself when he laughed, open-mouthed, revealing his progressively decaying gums.  He wanted to find the humor in any situation, and whether or not any were present, he would supplement with anecdotes from TV shows or movies since, for all we knew, he had few real-life experiences to draw from.  As years passed, his humor became progressively more lewd, obscene, and even offensive at times, completely inappropriate to the family gatherings which came to include his neices' children, but in spite of pleas from others that he censor himself, he seemed unable to distinguish what was appropriate from what was not.  It was, of course, uncomfortable and unpleasant and even disgusting and disturbing, and above all sad that such a genial and human desire should be so perverted from the blessing it could have been into a source of further alienation.

It's a mystery how any aspect of his life got to the state in which it ended.  The great mystery of all of us, I suppose, is how we end up so far from the glory God intends for us, but with some people the distance is so extreme as to be nearly incomprehensible.  I do not mean to say this in judgement, for I too am a fallen and bent person.  But why, by grace, do some of us manage to make a little headway while others fall and fall and fall?  Who or what should have caught him?  Why did none of us have the power to, if not fix, at least somewhat mend him?  At least make him stop killing himself.  

From the unexplained hints I've heard about his past, there were some issues going back to childhood.  I don't know what or how bad.  I know that the parenting he and his siblings received was uneven and sometimes questionable.  But I also know that he belonged to a church, both as a youth and as a prematurely decrepit adult.  I know that while his siblings might have come out with some regrets or some scars, they all managed to find their way, to make friends, get married, have children, hold jobs, brush their teeth, perform basic hygiene, pay for their cars, answer their phones, pick up their mail, wash their clothes and dishes, take out the trash, put sheets on the bed.  They function in society as tolerably well as anyone else.  Why not Rick?

By all accounts, except for his inexplicable failure to take care of himself and to sustain relationships with real people, he was an intelligent person.  His genetics certainly argued for him being brilliant, if eccentric.  He almost finished college, but his failure to seal the deal was probably not so much a function of lack of ability as it was refusal to play by the rules.  Having been born of the same line of academic skill, he used to ask me, when I was pretty well established as the valedictorian of my high school class, if I understood the chemical reactions described in my honors chemistry homework.  When I said I did, he argued that I did not need to finish the homework then, since the point of the work should have been for me to learn, and if that was already accomplished, why waste my time?  When he took up a theology interest after joining a church, he was, by his account, which I believe, able to argue really difficult points with his pastor based on some pretty wide-ranging concepts.  I'm sure his pastor loved that, particularly coupled with the decomposing mouth and the perpetual stench.  And yet his involvement with the church did not translate into an increased responsibility or a reasonable grounding into a community or even a basic sense of acceptable behavior in a human relationship.  The Bible was there; the church was there; the life path never veered. 

The only explanation that makes sense, and yet doesn't make sense, is that he had some sort of, for lack of a better term, mental illness.  Simply put, he was just made that way.  He was generous and thoughtful with his gifts: my hardback copies of the poetry volumes of Shel Silverstein are from him many many years ago.  He not only appreciated that author's wit and talent, but also that I, in particular, would also appreciate them.  He continued, even after I was grown up and moved on and saw him twice a year, if that, to never fail in his gifts to me: always books, always something I found fascinating.  Although his presence in my life and our family life dwindled to almost nothing, he always gave my children, whom he barely knew, very thoughtful gifts as well.  He loaned me DVDs and books that he thought I would enjoy or that we had briefly discussed at our last encounter.  I truly believe that he was endowed by his creator with a heart to give and share, to discuss and ponder and appreciate, to be connected to the people he loved.  But the best explanation I can come up with for why he lived and died as he did is that he was created that way too.  Some weakness, some brokenness, was too integral a part of his soul for any of his good qualities or any of his good relationships to pull him up out of the murk into which he sank progressively farther and farther as time went on.  His mother, my grandmother, seems to have some personality disorder issues which intensified as she aged, and maybe so did he.  We wondered at one time whether he had multiple personality disorder as well.  Those are the only answers we could come up with.  And yet they are not answers.  Why him?  Why not others?  If the rest of us are saved from those same genes and some of the same background by some act of powerful grace, why wasn't he?

I'm usually not as comforted as a life-long member of the church should be at the suggestion that the deceased is now in a better place, but in the case of Uncle Rick, I feel pretty sure that's true.  He was not all that good at life on this earth.  He was about to lose the night job he had held for years, and even he must have surely felt, as we all did, that he had been lucky to have that job and was not likely going to find another.  He had a habit of alienating, if not outright disgusting, the people with whom he might have had relationships.  What joy was there here for him?  What purpose?  What hope?  I feel fairly certain that death probably is the greatest peace and assurance he has ever known.  I feel equally certain that if there is a heaven, he will go there.  The last shall be first, the prodigal son will be welcomed home, the lost sheep will be found.  He has long been awaited with tenderness.