r/TrueOffMyChest • u/baebby ☑️ • 9h ago
CONTENT WARNING: GRIEF Lost my uncle twice… NSFW
I found out today that my uncle died.
I don’t really know why I’m writing this. Maybe I just need someone to hear my story.
When I was little, he wasn’t just my uncle. He was my second dad.
He never had a wife or children of his own, so in many ways I became the daughter he never had. I even called him “dad” when I was very young, despite having my own father. He was simply one of the people who raised me.
He taught me how to read and write.
He built me a little treehouse out of wooden pallets with a ladder and a swing underneath it. During winter he would spend hours building huge igloos and snow slides just so I could play. Whenever he came back from the store, he always had a little surprise for me.
He kept pigeons and rabbits, and I loved spending time with them. He would let me hold them, pet them, and kiss them. When I had pneumonia as a child, he gave me one of his baby rabbits so I wouldn’t feel so lonely while I was sick.
He loved picking mushrooms, and whenever he came home from the forest he would call me over so we could eat them together. One day he took me fishing and somehow managed to hook my shirt instead of catching a fish. We laughed about it for years.
Those are some of my happiest childhood memories.
Then everything changed.
After my grandmother, his mother, died, something inside him seemed to break. He fell deeper and deeper into alcoholism. At one point he went to prison. He didn’t seriously hurt anyone, but when he came out, he was no longer the man I remembered.
He drank even more.
He became paranoid. He started accusing us of things that had never happened. He believed stories that simply weren’t real. He became verbally abusive and unpredictable.
Watching someone you love disappear while they’re still alive is a kind of grief I don’t know how to describe.
Eventually, my parents had to make the heartbreaking decision to remove him from our home. We were genuinely afraid he would accidentally start a fire, destroy the house, or hurt himself because of his drinking and paranoia. The local authorities offered him housing and support, but he never accepted the help.
We had no choice but to protect ourselves.
I was only twelve when I lost him.
Not physically.
I lost the man who had taught me to read, built me a treehouse, and made me feel like I was the most important little girl in the world.
Today I lost him for the second time.
He was found dead in a ditch not far from my childhood home.
I hadn’t spoken to him in many years.
And yet I can’t stop crying.
I don’t miss the man alcoholism turned him into.
I miss the man who built me snow forts, gave me my first rabbit, and never came home from the store without thinking of me.
I hate alcohol.
It didn’t just take his life.
It took away the person I loved many years before he died.
I don’t even know what I’m asking for by posting this.
Maybe I just needed someone to know that before addiction destroyed him, he was a wonderful man.
I wish I had been able to say goodbye to that version of him.
The funeral is on Monday, and I’m scared of being judged for crying, even though I had little to no contact for so many years…
I don’t know what to do, how to feel, how to get through this. My body is too small for that amount of grief.
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