It couldn't possibly happen, could it?

Well, once again it's been a while.  However, I am finally updating again... So that's a good thing. 

The topic was, as is always the case, very hard to write... Until I actually wrote about it. ^_^ I guess I'm one for procrastinating.

The prospect of Uncle’s death had been a ghostly presence at the back of their minds for the past year. It lingered, transparent, never specifically thought about but still most definitely there. It was only in the months leading up to his illness that it had started to become more substantial, and they began to realise it’s inevitability. They started noticing references to death everywhere, in newspapers, on television, even in the graffiti that coated the brick walls and concrete that they passed in the street. Though still they never broached the subject, not until the very end, when Uncle was hospitalized, and even then not really speaking of it, but rather circling around it, the meaning of their words being found not in what they said, but what they didn’t say. Even as he lay on his deathbed, it had a vague, it-couldn’t-possibly-happen feel to it,

The times when it became hard reality differed for each of them.

For the eldest, squinting through the rain as the coffin was lowered into the ground, and pondering the cliché of rain at a funeral, it was when his wife sighed, and said “Well, that’s it then”, and he thought with some surprise, “Yes, I suppose it is”, that he truly understood that the uncle was dead, and his mind turned immediately to thoughts of inheritance, money and property.

For the middle child, it was in bed the night after the funeral, staring up at the ceiling and thinking of the times she had spent with the Uncle, all those unpleasant family dinners and his snide, richer-than-thou mannerisms, and she whispered “Oh, thank God that’s over.”

For the youngest, sitting with his wife, wondering when to broach the subject of divorce, and her asking him about inheritance, and he hating her and hating her and hating her for thinking only of the money when she should be mourning, it was when he realised that he wasn’t mourning either, and how much he had hated the Uncle in life, and feeling glad that he wouldn’t have to enjoy his company any more, and hating and hating and hating himself for feeling glad about death.

Through each of their realizations of the Uncle’s death, they found themselves confronted with yet another ghostly presence, another niggling it-couldn’t-possibly-happen feeling in the back of their minds. They were confronted with the reality of their own deaths, and once again, they could not possibly comprehend it as being real until it was actually upon them.