I’ve found myself saying “sorry for your loss” a lot lately.

First it was to the orthodontist my kid and I are both seeing.

Fun fact: Orthos apparently have 2x the clientele during Covid because parents like me — who don’t have to go to work IRL anymore — are getting braces. (For the second time, in my case.) We have to be there for our buck-toothed kids with overbites anyway, so it makes for a very efficient decision!

In the first few visits my son realized that a huge melon-sized goldfish, whose body took up 1/4 of the tank located in the lobby, was very eager to follow little humans back and forth when they stepped up to the glass to admire him. My son was immediately enamored and so visited with “Bubbles” every time we went to the office. (The normal-sized fish seemed to take their second-class status in stride.)

So the day 13-year old Bubbles was conspicuously absent, I gingerly broached the subject with the receptionist. Her expression confirmed that she recently arrived to work only to face a very disturbing decision: what to do with an upside-down fish who was CLEARLY too big to flush.

Only a week after Bubbles went to the Great Aquarium in the Sky, my mom got news that a brother-in-law was “not doing well,” a result of a recent Parkinson’s and cancer diagnosis. On behalf of mom, my sister, and myself, I did fast-fire fact-gathering texts with my deceased dad’s sister. I asked for Uncle Bill’s address so we could send cards to ensure he knew we were thinking of him — and thought well of him — despite the disastrous last interaction he and my aunt had with my father.

Related to the delay in this blog post, I was personally and professionally underwater, and felt concerned about too many days passing until I could urge my mom, sister, and myself into action. But as I feared, we missed the moment. Just five days after the first alert my aunt sent a new text: “Sad news. Bill just passed away.”

I suppressed the guilty inclination to be upset that we didn’t get more warning … to feel beside myself that we didn’t get to say goodbye in order to ease our collective consciences. Instead, I settled for saying “sorry for your loss” to a sister I knew was reeling, and sending flowers to a wife and an adult daughter.

In the end, death tends to be SUPER distracting for the person on the way out. I sincerely doubt we — the extended relatives my uncle rarely saw in recent decades — were top of his mind when he took his last breath. This blog is an homage to all those imperfect moments when the living don’t get to say goodbye to the dying, and satisfy a selfish desire to be at peace.

Bubbles and Uncle Bill, wherever you are, I hope you know we admired you.

Yours truly,

Irreverent Rachel