Death in the Digital Age

There were no miracles the day that my uncle passed away. If anything, they had been the previous 15 years, two decades or so when he'd been given 5 to live. Cancer drugs sucked, but they'd offered years more for me to get to know my uncle.

He loved science fiction, he wrote an as yet unpublished children's novel, he loved antiques. He collected Minox cameras and 8mm Disney films. He was a chemist, who produced kits to excite kids, like me and my brother, about Science. I think a big part of why my brother is getting his degree in the field is because of my uncle.

I only realized as I walked into the hospital that, when I feared that I had not used the years with him very well, that my uncle Randy, and my aunt, had known how to value time spent together all along, after making it through those first 5 years.