Every now and then I try to look them up. There’s a distant cousin in Kentucky. An estranged aunt in Tennessee, and another cousin close to her. We don’t run in the same social circles or even have the same lifestyles.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t care.

My hubby’s best friend’s parents have lived in the same house for at least 30 years now, and this same friend’s grandfather owned hundreds of acres in the area. They don’t move. But for some reason, my extended family is a bit nomadic, like the early Israelites, forever seeking the promised land, and changing addresses like underwear. Somehow, my childhood was full of memories of these people. Summers spent hiking in the woods with them. Hunting grapevines and learning to make those into
wreaths. Bike riding and learning to play basketball and going to visit my uncle’s Kresge store and listening to all sorts of new music that we didn’t listen to in my house. Music like Shenandoah, Garth Brooks, and Gloria Estefan and Howard Jones.

These people were family. They lived in different cities, states. But somewhere along the path of their adult lives, they drew a line in the sand that none of us were to cross.

So every now and then I google them to see if anything has changed on their whereabouts or if there’s a current address. Usually I come up with nothing, and three or four hours later, I close up the computer and try again in six months or so.

Tonight, I happened to be googling an uncle. This uncle came to live with us (my grandmother and I) when I was about 12, and took on a sort of hybrid big brother/father figure role in my life. He eyeballed the boyfriends that knocked on the door, showed me how to hold a shotgun and attempted (I use that term loosely) to teach me how to drive a late model Ford Bronco stick shift. (That bush in the median had no chance at all.)

He had some terrible habits… He chewed tobacco and could swear like a sailor when he was angry. But, he was a teddy bear with a heart of gold when it mattered.

I haven’t seen him since 2000, just before my husband and I moved to Alabama. Two nomadic ships moving on to new oceans, my uncle and I. But I still googled, just in case a real address popped up.

Then tonight, sitting in a hotel room with my family sleeping peacefully, I thought I’d look once more.

And then I saw it. His obituary. From March 12, 2009. Just four days shy of his birthday. And just like that, another family member is gone. I’d never seen it before in the dozens upon dozens of times I’ve looked, so why it popped up now is beyond me.

There are no details of his passing, no cemetery information. He never married, so with no heirs and no close relatives, did anyone even have him buried? And where? Our family plot wasn’t housing him to my knowledge.

Yes, I know the official date was more than three years ago. But to me it was five minutes ago. Why couldn’t google have shared his whereabouts before he passed, so I could give one last hug? Send an email? One last sheepish, awkward brotherly-fatherly hug? One last I love you. One last I’m sorry. One last noogie.

So today, I will quietly and singly mourn the death of an uncle-brother-dad the way no one else can understand. Monday, I will check to see if he was buried anywhere. And each day, I will know that he will be one of those angels in my welcoming party in heaven.

In the meantime, my family has one more guardian angel here on earth.

XOXO
~Karen