France, Uncle Stephen and scars

well France has joined in reading. i wonder if it's because i was talking about French's mustard...? if one of you wants to fill me in feel free =]

today is the 7th of January. that means that in just 10 days it will be 2 months since my Uncle Stephen passed away. for those of you that don't know me, (it's odd thinking that people who don't know me read this, but sorta cool at the same time) my uncle has been mentally handicapped his whole life, about 10 years ago, he fell down some steps and became paralyzed from the neck down. he has since been in nursing homes as well as in and out of the hospital. starting in August in went in and out about 3 times i think, with some massive infections and surgeries. his colon and basically failed. i'll save you the yucky details on here, but that sums it up. on October 30th i was doing a fundraiser with my youth group, and a group of us went to the hospital to visit several people from the church. me and Kristen made it into ICU to see him. he can be really hard to understand, so the conversation was pretty limited, but he asked if we would be going trick or treating the next day, we told him yes and he said to remember that he likes peppermint patties and regular M&M's. sadly i never got the chance to bring him any. it starting going down hill from there. he stopped eating solid food and wasn't comfortable. he was on many different medications, to lower his blood pressure and ease pain. on November 17th in the afternoon our family friend went to see him, at that point he had been in a normal hospital room, once there she texted my mom and told him that he wasn't there anymore, she found out he had once again been moved back into ICU. my mom was catering that night and i was at club j, my dad left his Bible study to go be with him after they did a Cat-Scan. they called him and told him they where taking him back into surgery that night. i picked up my mom and we got there at about 8:45, at about 9:15 the doctor came out and told us there was nothing he could do. he would be gone within hours. i stepped out and called my brothers and texted some people who needed to know. my brothers got there, Matt Knapp and Pastor Greg made it, as well as our family friend. it was so unreal knowing that we where going into a room to say goodbye to someone. that this was really the last time we would see him.

we where all allowed to gather in the small room at once. it was nice having Pastor Greg there, he has done this many times before and could tell us what all of the monitors meant. the nurses took uncle Stephen off of the blood pressure medication, gave him pain killers and some relaxers. he never actually woke up again, but we could tell he knew we where there. he blinked a few times and would relax if we talked to him. we got to be there to pray him home. to say the last things we wanted to say. it wasn't easy at all, but at the same time, a blessing.
he left this earth at about 11:30. we had about 2 hours warning, which is more then many get.

because of costs and everything, he was cremated. now what i didn't expect was how weired out i would be when my dad brought his ashes home... they are all wrapped up in a box. we actually haven't put him in the cemetery yet (he's going in our church's little church) so there still somewhere in our house. buuut i told my mom to make sure they are somewhere i can't find them. i have no clue where they are. and i plan on keeping it that way. for some reason it just made me feel odd knowing that my uncle was now all put into this urn/box.

death isn't a nice, pretty thing... but at the same time it's just a part of life. sometimes the end comes early (knock on wood) and other times, people live forever.

i'm really hopping that i won't have to face death like that again. but at the same time, it's going to come up again sometime in my life. 

this is kinda a depressing topic in someways. but it was just on my mind, so i figured i would share it.

random fact
i have 5 scars on my left knee, 3 on my right. one set is from a accident, the other is from surgery.
until the next post
emilie