it's all serious up in here

so, a little over a week ago, on thursday the 15th, my uncle died.

John Lykken, 1/14/48-3/15/12

it was sudden, unexpected, and totally Not Awesome.  quite frankly, i haven't heard yet if they've figured out exactly why he died.  last i heard they didn't know.  what i DO know is he had alzheimer's for almost 10 years, and has been in facilities for approximately the same amount of time.  i know he's had violent episodes, and i know he wasn't "doing too well," although i cannot say for sure what precisely was meant by that.

i also have to say i didn't know him too very well, since as is the case with pretty much my entire family he lived half the country away from me so i didn't see him too often.  the last time i saw him, actually, was at my grandfather's funeral 8 years ago, and at that point in time he was already starting to slip into the alzheimer's.

my parents were the only ones in my family able to go to the funeral for him (exorbitant airline prices), but my mother came back with lots of pictures of relatives and buffalo (that's south dakota for you), and most importantly a story.  tidbit.  trivia?  pick your word.  ANYWAY.  what had happened involved my aunt, my uncle, and my cousin, who is also deceased.  my cousin aaron died 11 years ago by his own hand, and i still feel like he died yesterday.  i miss him terribly, and am unconvinced i will ever move much more past it.  that said, my mother came home and told me that while they were out burying my uncle, she asked my aunt sue where aaron was buried, and aunt sue came back with this: when aaron died, they cremated him, and never buried/scattered him anywhere, because nowhere felt right.  so she held on to the urn holding him.  when uncle john died, it apparently came to her exactly what to do with aaron.  and so, aaron's urn was placed in john's casket, and they were buried together.

that...is probably my most favorite thing in the world.  i absolutely miss them both terribly, but there is extreme comfort in knowing they are together.

AND, now that i am having trouble reading what i'm writing through the cryings, i shall stop, because i think i can go no further at the moment.

bye, uncle john.  and bye, aaron.  i love you both.

maybe my vocabulary is TOO big

QUICK!

name three to seven nouns that starts with the letter "H" a four year old would know what it was and how to draw it!

what did you come up with?

horse, house, hand, hose, and hat?

cool.

know what i got?

heaven, habit, humongous, hatred, homeopathic, and hit.

i am not good at this game.

this is a slight problem for me, because at school we have alphabet books that we work in.  each go at them requires that three (3) letters be done.  doing a letter involves tracing it with your finger, then a marker, then copying it below freehand, then drawing a picture of something that starts with that letter.

the children tend to want to draw what their friend before them drew, so it isn't a big issue, except when they actually need ideas.  because i Suck Royally at that.

i think the Worst Letter for that is actually "D", which was Very Kindly Pointed Out for me that "D" is a Very Easy Letter for this, because there are things like dragon and dog and doctor and i can't think of anymore because all i can come up with is defunct and dissociate and derelict and devolve and driven and drank and other things that four year olds have NO IDEA WHAT THAT MEANS.

and quite frankly, even if they DID know any of those words, most of them, as far as i know, are un-illustratable (i think i made that word up.  whatever)(also i'm pretty sure they actually know "drank."  but i digress.  another d word.  rockin'.).

we've actually taken to keeping a dictionary (D!) in our room this year, because this is a common problem.  mostly for me.....i can come up with ignoramus a lot better than ice cream, nasal  better than nose, malice better than mouse, perfunctory better than....AH!  penguin (see?).

maybe i should take to having a permanent list of things for each letter to refer to so as to no longer have to think on my feet.  i tend to feel bad when all i have to recommend for an illustration is "colloquialism."

but maybe that's just me.