Groundhog Day, My redo

                                                                                Groundhog

Looking back on life I can’t think of many circumstances I would change or do over, although there is one I can remember like it was yesterday and find myself dwelling on it quite frequently.  I’m going to tell a story of something I would change in an instance.

Growing up I had all uncles, in fact I had 5 uncles no aunts until my uncles started beginning their families. When I was a baby my mother and father split and I lived with my mom at my nanas house where also two of my mom’s brothers Gary and Ernie lived and the third one Bobby visited often. Since most of my time I was there I was always closer to them. On weekends I would go to my fathers and spend time with him and my grandparents and two uncles Gary and Matthew. I have many pictures with Gary and Matthew but I don’t remember the events in which they occurred. As a started getting older I saw less and less of my dad, I would only see him on birthdays and holidays like Christmas. Then he “went away” meaning he went to jail, and to this day I still don’t know what he did to get put in the slammer and I don’t care to ask at this point in my life. Our relationship became very cold and distance and nothing like a father daughter relationship should be, he treated me more like a friend or niece and still does, but I’ve learned that he doesn’t know how to be a father and after 18 years I have learned to deal with it. Well this story has went in a different direction it’s obvious I still wish my father would have turned out differently but I can’t change it, it has made me who I am today. In those years that I didn’t see my father I also didn’t see my uncle Gary or Matthew, Matthew got married and started his own family and Gary went off the deep end. I didn’t really realize until he started getting into fights and he was known as a really bad guy in the town aurora, MO. He gave the last name Crane a bad meaning and bad reputation. My mother wouldn’t really tell me a whole lot but she didn’t like me going over there anymore. As I got a little older and learned about drugs I learned my father and Uncle Gary had been overcome by them and were selling and using every day.  I mean you don’t have to be an idiot to figure it out, Oh your high all the time and have money. When I turned 14 I had lost the connection I had once had with my Uncle Gary every time he saw me he would say, Am I your favorite uncle and I replied yes. He was funny and so easy going and I loved that about him, he would always so if you need me for anything I will be there and I believed him until I lost him. When I was a freshman in high school I got a phone call from my dad which I found a little odd, and then he spoke the words I never wanted to hear. “Uncle Gary passed away” I couldn’t even understand those words and just started bawling, I gave the phone to my mother because I couldn’t speak. My mother was one of my Uncle Gary’s friends through high school and my mom and dads on and off relationship. So immediately she lost it as well. My mom automatically knew he had overdosed but it took me a couple days, to process. All I remember is being so angry, I was angry at him for doing drugs and I was angry at drugs for killing my uncle.  If I could change one thing in my life it would be to just tell him how much he meant to me, and how I wanted him to be at my graduation and my wedding and for my kids to have a wonderful great uncle. Maybe that would have changed his mind. I wish I could have told him my testimony that I experienced with Christ because I know he was saved once when he used to go to church, maybe he would have seen the light.