It wasn’t until a few months ago that I experienced my own rendition of Billy Pilgrim’s predicament. A pamphlet I discovered in my doctor’s office that read of statistical bore concerning Africans infected with the unrelenting epidemic left me to decipher my own interpretation of UFO’s levitating through my memory and forced me to sort out past happenings in any way I saw fit. The topic of the fatal assassin was all it took and there I was in a stupor sometime back when Pluto was still very much a planet and being inaccessible from the time school let out until dinner was ready didn’t lead our parents to believe we’d been kidnapped. 
This recollection I had begins when I’m 9ish...so 4th grade it must have been? It was that time of day I was released from the sea of bowl shaped haircuts and the smell of lunchmeat. Christmastime was making a guest appearance in Portland: the s***hole, so things were a smidge more pleasant than usual. Snow was beginning to invade ground as far as the eye could see causing our family’s prized 68’ to glide recklessly down the single road veiled with sheets of ice. And at this point here, I’m still just a nine year old kid who prefers his PB&J served out of a Star Wars lunchbox.
This Tuesday in December which began as they all did became a radical stimulus for both a giving and taking away which started when my uncle returned home to Oregon after “quitting” his job in Seattle. Pulling into the driveway, I could see his scrawny figure struggling to force a trunk into his new home, our garage. He looked even skinnier than usual. His trademark Panama Fedora settled neatly on his head and an oversized button up draped his boney torso. Hugs were given, catching up commenced, we dined. Hushed adult talk was next, but nine year olds don’t really connect the dots.
That night he returned home I volunteered to help him settle in. I know it was wrong to play favorites, but he was mine. He always played good music and had fascinating stories about this and that and here and there. We spent the night replacing the garage’s bare walls with tapestries, band posters displaying psychedelic entanglement, and acquired art that did nothing for me until much later. We reminisced about our family’s trip to Ann Arbor last October to visit my grandma Neva.We laughed remembering how we got lost in a corn maze because we ventured off from the others in a different direction He constantly yawned, cracked out the hard stuff. He then proceeded to ask me my nine year old thoughts on love. My conclusion: I didn’t care that he wasn’t “normal” as dad said. 
Silver tinsel ravished our living room. Scooby was on, I was in a trace. The gleam of white Christmas lights rudely forced itself through the window and into the living room. Jeremy’s irritant ways were in full swing as he attempted “Jingle Bells” on the piano that was stored in the study. Things were going smoothly, then mom read the letter.
The letter addressed to Henri Bennett from a certain Dr. Reed contained the last catalyst in the series of events. I heard her commotion from the kitchen and wondered what could possibly be important enough for her to interrupt Mystery Inc. She was crying? I thought maybe it was a really high bill or perhaps Liz, my floozy sister was writing to share the news we’d all been expecting sooner or later. But no. The letter contained results of a medical exam my uncle had untimely failed.  
So December turned to January and January to February. I watched skinny turn to skeletal and it seemed as though energy was being sucked right out of a horse. School got s***tier too cause’ the day my best friend Charlie complained his “life sucked” all cause’ his mom didn’t pack him a pudding cup, I punched him square in the nose. How dare him. After that, I didn’t have many friends, but I wasn’t looking for any either.
I held his hand one day toward the end. He told me I shouldn’t be sad because he made the choice, but I knew that wasn’t so even then. It was inevitable just like the time we had, just like death. I was there reading Creepshow out loud as I sat propped up on a window seat in his room. 301 was cold, they didn’t bring him any jello that day. He mumbled something to me about not forgetting to water his Bleeding Heart he had  sat on a windowsill in his Seattle apartment  That was the last thing I heard him say, fitting I guess.
He died late February and so it goes I guess. Everybody wanted to then say they regretted not being more accepting of his “abnormality”. Nobody cared until he became a plot of grass. Nobody wanted to look beyond his preferences until he was a lump of dust. My first loss was really something. Seconds, minutes, hours go by then you’re a ghost. Time, being one of the most valuable assets we have often goes overlooked until you’re forced watching life’s common commodities wither into nothing.