My Heart is Sad.

I received word from my mother this morning that my Uncle Norman has passed away. He lived in a group home in Moreno Valley, where he's lived since my grandfather had to be put into an assisted living facility. In the photo above, he's the one sitting at the table. (Also in the picture, left to right, Richard and Molly Vermette (my uncle and his wife) and my Mom and Dad.)

It's odd that we received the call today...I was thinking about him all through this morning, about visiting him during the kids' break from school. I recalled how hard it was to talk to him on the phone since he didn't have a hearing aid, and felt that I should call my Mom to make the arrangements to visit him. I also thought about how one day, his body would be renewed and he would be free of all the impairments he was burdened with in this life and that I couldn't wait to see what he would be like in the afterlife. Then, an hour later, I received a call from my Mom, telling me that he had passed away.

Norman Vermette would have been 70 on January 26th. He never held a job due to physical and mental disabilities that began at his difficult birth (according to the doctor, he was oxygen deprived), though he was a hard worker in all that he tried to do. I grew up visiting him and my grandparents twice a week or more. He lived in 29 Palms most of his life. He often annoyed us as kids...he acted like a kid (teasing, tattling, being mean) but had an adult's body and we were expected to treat him like an adult. He had the largest collection of comic books I had ever seen, which he would let us read from time to time. He was an usher at the Catholic church we attended, and performed his duties faithfully every Sunday. He loved to watch television. He hated changes in his routine or that of anyone around him. He liked things in order and would often "spy" on us as kids to make sure things were in order. We all got used to him following us around. He was the first to call with any news, bad or good. He could whistle tunes like no one I've ever met. He doted on his mother and loved to buy her little trinkets. My funnest memory of him was when he would put us on the trailer in back of his little yard tractor and give us a ride. I also remember him driving a little go-cart around my grandparents' five acre desert home. I remember he had a pet monkey ages ago when I was very young, and he loved that monkey a ton.

He was always affectionate to me and to my children. He loved to watch the kids, and delighted in trying to figure out which relative they reminded him of as children. He had a nice smile and a funny laugh and would rub his hands together in delight when he told or heard a funny joke. Those same hands would writhe together when he was upset or anxious. He was very opinionated, and the anxiety he suffered from increasingly affected his relationships with people as he got older. He was valiant in doing the best he knew how to help his Mom and his Dad as their health deteriorated. His greatest accomplishment in my opinion was that he helped all of us learn to be less judgmental and more Christ-like in our love for others, both by being difficult (at times) to love and by being a truly loving human being. He believed in God and did everything he was capable of as well as he could. I loved him, and he will be missed by his five siblings and the members of our families.