Uncle Joe

I have these cousins, but we were raised calling them Aunts and Uncles since my mom was an only child and not close to her step siblings. My grandma and her brother Richard bought attached cabins (a duplex) with the stone fronts like you would see all over the Ozarks, and we spent our summer vacations there. As the years past they built on to the place and our families filled it with laughter and tears, card games and water balloon fights. Fireworks on fourth of July and sunburns like I have not had since. The uncles left at the crack of dawn to fish, coming back in time for breakfast, and the grandpas were grilling for dinner by 4p and the gang would be playing cards by 7p. The cousins we would be playing cards for pretzels or running between the two cabins.
Memories of the time the tornado came through and we all hid in the bathrooms and much time spent fishing of the dock walkway catching sunfish with cheese and hotdogs.
That old place was sold in 1992, everyone so busy getting their lives going, now we wish we had that place again for our kids to spend summers at!
Our Uncle Joe and Aunt Laura have one son, Joseph .
Aunt Linda and Uncle Jim have two children Jimmy and Sara, Uncle Russell did not have children and then my mom has us four kids.
There is nothing like a wonderful childhood memory that consists of annual summer vacations, weekend get aways that seemed to last forever.
We would see family for Thanksgiving and Christmas in January. Always that feeling of THERE IS NOTHING LIKE FAMILY TO FILL THE HEART!
In my youth uncle Joe found out he had kidney failure and after many years of battle he was able to overcome with a kidney transplant, being a child then I don't remember all those details just that sometimes he looked jaundice and other times really thin.
But he improved and we saw him for weddings and graduation's, the occasional funeral as the elders of this family had moved on to walk with God.
Two years ago Aunt Linda lost Uncle Jim to a brain tumor and it so saddened all of us. We knew he was at peace, you could feel it from his family. Then to see all those that loved him at his memorial service, it was amazingly wonderful.
Now with my step dad so very ill we have had our hearts heavy. The other day I got an email that my great Aunt June (Laura, Linda and Russell's mom) was taken to the hospital but was back home and ok. They were waiting for tests to tell them why she was weak and having heart beat issues. Then this evening, Brad walked in the bedroom and said, with cell phone in hand, "Sara called" in this 2 second pause I am thinking Aunt June died OMG, but instead he states "Uncle Joe died" I sat straight up,
WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Uncle Joe passed this evening, they believe he fell off the roof! Aunt Laura had not seen him in the house in some time and went out to look for him and found him in the yard. The ambulance came and they were unsuccessful in giving him life. God had already taken him home.




I am so sad to hear this news and at the same time I know he is with God I hope he knows he is with God, and I am knowing that these two sisters are coming together and Linda will know how to help Laura through this horrific event and they together can lean on one another.
I am so sad
I wish there was something I could do.
I will wait to hear the news of what is next to come, Again I am quiting smoking, I pick the best times!!!!!! But who cares right, A wife lost her husband, a son lost his father, future grandchildren will never know there Grandpa. But God wins one more of his sons, welcoming him home with open arms.
I am so sad!
so these memories are filling my head and I am smiling, and sad, happy, and sad
mourning a loss in our family and know that it will not be the last, and hoping it is not the first of many to come close together.
such an awful thought and feeling, I was just thinking today that we are all getting older and soon we will be the oldest in our families, that our older generation is becoming us, scary huh!!!
so as Brad said, live today as if it were your last, don't be angry. You never know what God has planned for any of us, that fast and we can be gone! What memory do you leave behind?