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the patience of  grief

Lio Patrick

When I was fourteen, my uncle Bear was killed by his friend, a man I 
never met, in a drug dispute.

I am fortunate enough to say it was my first encounter with death. I 
didn’t know what to do, how to understand. I didn’t think it was real at all. He 
was not dead. For long after the funeral, I did not believe in death. I absolutely 
did not believe that anyone could die.

My uncle was twenty-one. I have officially lived longer than him. A few 
years ago, before I turned twenty-one, I began to think a lot more about his 
funeral, as if  it had finally dawned on me. While some lighter feelings float, grief  
settles at the bottom. Details washed back up after so long in the deep: conversa-
tions, people laughing and crying at the same time, my suit-adorned father, who 
did not speak the entire day, and whom I had not lived with for at least six years. 
With deep embarrassment, I recalled the pair of  funeral home workers staring 
at me as I had a panic attack on the bench next to the front door. I’d written a 
melodramatic poem that I wanted to put in his casket, but had lost my nerve and 
asked my mother to place it inside instead. I couldn’t look at him, and when I did 
I couldn’t see him. After they closed the casket, we were given permanent mark-
ers to write final farewells across the wood. Now I can appreciate the sentiment. 
Back then all I could think about was my proximity to a dead man. My mind 
blanked and I spelled “remember” wrong. Somewhere in the ground, there is a 
wooden box with the word “rember” shakily crossed out.

It was funny, and yes, I do mean that kind of  funny. Before we drove to 
the funeral home, Bear’s father kept telling jokes and yelling obscenities. There 
was cake, which was called “better than sex,” but which my pious aunt rebrand-
ed “better than video games” for my brothers and me. In the funeral home, we 
sat next to one of  our favorite cousins as he related sensational stories about his 
brother. We all saw so little of  each other. We celebrated way before we cried.

Only a few months before, when one cousin told a different uncle that he 
was her favorite, he thanked her but said, “It’s not like I have much competition. I 
mean, Bear?” At the funeral, he was a pallbearer, the first to grab the box, one of  
the few who understood just how much it weighed.

What I mean to say is that we never know who it will be, and when. 
This is a reminder, however insufficient the words are at reaching over a wall of  
incommunicable feeling.

I don’t know at what point I knew that Bear was dead. It wasn’t when 
I felt the first step down into panic as I approached a full coffin, an open coffin, 
and was not able to see or breathe. It wasn’t as his brothers lowered him into the 
ground, as his sister said with visible breath, “Of  course it’s only when we’re out-



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side freezing that I start crying.” It took years of  not seeing him at holidays and of  
hearing about what it would be like if  he were there. During some of  those years 
I wanted to be like him, even though I still didn’t altogether comprehend what 
that meant. I never spoke a word to any of  my family about it. I don’t know how 
many of  them felt it too. We never know.

My immediate family stopped going to see most of  Bear’s side of  the 
family years ago, for various reasons. Other people have been born, others have 
gotten hurt or sick, others too have gone away forever. There are so many things 
and so many people to think about. I can’t regret the fact that I don’t remember 
them all.