i was laughing so hard last night during system of a down when serj pointed out that someone had fallen in the pit. he told the band to stop and everyone in the audience to make way for the man down. then daron kept saying, "we have a man down. we have a man down. make way. we have a man down. mama, i've fallen" and on and on. that's when i was laughing because daron was really funny. i thought of south park as well, "red sleigh down. we have a red sleigh down."

but now, the man who is down is my uncle. i just got an email from my mom. she said my uncle is dead. her youngest brother. he died on january 18th. she didn't say how or why though. just that she wished she stayed in okinawa when we visited to feed him. maybe he just didn't take care of himself and didn't eat properly and died of malnutrition or starvation? sounds odd i know, but he hasn't been all there for years so it's possible. it's so very weird though. i emailed her back, asking for more details. i can't quite sort out how i feel because i just didn't know him very well. i know him probably the least out of all my aunts and uncles. my strongest image/memory is of him fighting with my mother. maybe those are her strongest images/memories as well, which is why she feels regret. i feel regret for not even seeing him during my last visit to okinawa. my other uncle didn't want to bother to see him because he's been such a pest and burden to the family. my mom said i didn't have to go see him but she wanted to. i didn't want to cause tension between the uncles so i didn't go. it was very weird the last time i saw him 7 years ago so that was a major factor in my reasoning not to see him. it's all so strange. i could understand suicide, but i can't understand how he died if my mom said she wished she stuck around to feed him. did he really starve himself to death? did he die of malnutrition? i just don't know. it's so weird that we went to okinawa to sort of see my grandmother for the last time, just in case she dies soon, and instead it's my uncle that died.

i think another strange part for me is that this is the first aunt/uncle to die within my lifetime. the only one of the siblings that's died so far was my dad. that's a completely different sort of feeling. aunt/uncle is more detached relationship than a parent. the ripple is the same throughout the family though. it's just that i don't live in the country where the majority of the family lives. and it was the black sheep. so strange. i just figured he would 'keep on living' (speaking of le tigre of late) and i hoped that one day he would get better, mentally. but if you don't take your medicine you don't get better. something just went wrong with his mental health and it got worse and worse. he didn't try to help himself. and now he's dead.

[update 1/23/05: my mom wrote a lengthy email. it comes down to this: the body has already been cremated and no autopsy was performed. they can only guess as to how he died. she said he had trouble eating solid foods and when she visited she made soft foods for him. one guess is that he choked. he was found with an empty plate on the kitchen table and had fallen down, in the kitchen i'm guessing by her email. so maybe he was trying to get some food or was heading for the bathroom. we'll never know.]