Uncle Patrick

Growing up, I thought you were the coolest person I knew.  You would drive up and visit us in Maine with your ripped jeans and motorcycle jacket, always chewing on a toothpick.  You were "Danny Zucco" cool.  I had to have a jacket just like yours, I wanted to be just like you.  I would always roll my eyes when you called me "SchmErin" - it was a baby name and I hated it.  What I would give to hear it now.

I remember laughing and laughing when you took Shannon and I out for McDonalds.  You joked that you would tie me to the bumper for the ride home.  I'm not sure what prompted this empty threat, but we all thought it was funny, until I cried.

I heard my mother's hushed phonecalls with your sisters about your struggle with addiction.  It had such a strong hold on you. None of us fully understood it nor could ever comprehend how binding it was.

For a time, you were sober, and accomplished so much.  After you graduated from culinary school, when we visited New York or when you visited us in Maine,  you would cook for us.  My adolescent sense of taste was no match for your mako shark or falafel, but how I loved your cream puffs stuffed with strawberries and pastry cream.  We visited you in Manhattan where you had the tiniest of apartments and worked in the hippest, dive restaurants in the Bowery.  You took us around the city, showing us all the sites - you were NEVER cooler.

I know that the demon never quite let go, and that hard life weakened your heart, already marred by genetics.  You battled with heart disease, suffering heart attacks and undergoing surgeries.  Later, everytime I saw you, you were paler, weaker, and older than you should have been. 

Last week, God called you to Heaven.  Now I know, people always say this when someone they love, passes from this world as a way of comforting themselves.  But really, I don't think that phrase could be any truer than now.  For all of your adult life, He watched you fight that demon, as it and the heart disease took its toll on your body and spirit.  God knew it was time.  Time for your family to stop worrying despite the initial despair we feel right now.  It was time for you to be in a place where there would be no more fight with an unsatisfied yearning and nothing to hold you but His love.  In short, it is time for you to be whole.

I take heart, knowing that I will see you again, restored and your spirit will be finally at peace. 

Until then, stay cool.