Ok here I go again.
So a significant person in my life past and/or present. This is really hard, because I feel like there have been many significant people my life who have made great impacts. I truly believed that the people that surround you, help shape the kind of person you are. One of those greatest influences has to be my uncle Jimmy. I know I've blogged about him before and as we approach his birthday, it always makes me a bit sad. (He would have been 57 this year.) I really do wish that I had known more about his past life, as well as more of the family history. He was the one who kept in contact with all my Texan relatives and visited all my great-aunts & uncles because he too lived in Texas most of his life. Perhaps someday I will visit San Antonio and be able to wander the city that he loved so much. When I was first applying to colleges he had suggested that I move to Texas and give it a try and sometimes I wonder, what if I had.
He was the one who always pushed me to go to school. (I have so many letters where this was the main emphasis.) He didn't want me to end up like so many of our family members. I'm still the only one on my mom's immediate side of the family to complete a bachelor's degree (besides him), which also means the first to start a master's program (besides him). I also, still have every one of his letters as well as e-mails. It took several years before I could actually go back and re-read them. But now I find comfort in them. Much of the advice he gave me then, can often times be applied to current situations.
I miss our talks. We talked about anything and everything. They were always so random, we were very alike in personality and even the same kind of humor. We talked about everything from what was going on at school, boys and what I hoped to do someday. Looking back now, we didn't always talk about what it was like for him to be raised mostly by my great-grandparents because he choose to not migrate with the family every year and stay in school. I still have so many questions, that I know will never be answered. My mom is the youngest of the 7 kids and he was the oldest, so her upbringing was so much more different than his.
He passed away on Thanksgiving day in '03. I was the last person to talk to him in my family. We joked about how when he came for Christmas he was taking over my room because he liked my bed so much. I told him, no way; that was my room and I was going to be staying there. So he offered to get me a room at the Best Western in town, but only if he could come use the pool. I would also be the one to answer the phone when Paul called to tell us that he had passed away.
It actually wouldn't be until years later that my mom finally admitted that he had stopped all his medications and hadn't wanted to tell anyone, but had confessed to her only weeks before he passed away. He was tired and his body was even more tired. His lungs were so weak and his liver needed a transplant in addition to so many other things that all the cocktails had caused havoc on his body. I can't even or want to imagine what living with HIV/AIDS for so long does to your body, soul and emotional state.
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